NEWS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 17, 2010

Making the Right Connections: Brockville General Hospital Plugs in to Centralized Diagnostic Imaging System

Brockville ON— Brockville General Hospital (BGH) has connected to the Hospital Diagnostic Imaging Repository Services (HDIRS), a system that provides centralized storage of diagnostic images, such as X-rays, CT scans and ultrasounds.

"We are very excited to be a part of the HDIRS project," says Deb Wilson, BGH Manager of Diagnostic Imaging. "The ability to link multiple systems is quite an accomplishment and a major step towards an electronic medical record. The diagnostic imaging repository will eliminate the need for patients to transport their films and images between hospitals. It will allow primary care providers and specialists to view images instantly regardless of where they were acquired, and ultimately provide better access to care for our patients."

HDIRS, a partnership between 23 hospital corporations extending from Brockville to Toronto, is managing the development, implementation and operation of the shared information system. In 2011, when all partners are connected, the system will enable the sharing of reports and images among 35 health care facilities that are collectively serving the health needs of 3.4 million people making up 10 per cent of Canada's population..

“We started in 2009 to facilitate the connections needed,” says BGH Information Management/Information Technology (IM/IT) Manager Rene Melchers. “Different hospitals have different PACS vendors (Picture Archiving Communications System), so different configurations are required at each organization.”

The BGH IM/IT team had to develop interfacing to send images, while reconfiguring network connectivity to establish a secure “tunnel” to the HDIRS site.

“There are strict privacy and security protocols,” explains Melchers. “We had to have the protection of information in place first. That took eight months to complete.

“This was a ground-breaking project. Our system was not designed for this, so we had to work it out, work with HDIRS, and sometimes learn to wait.”

Melchers says there were many valuable lessons learned.

“It was interesting to work with the regional privacy and security protocols, to learn how it’s all done and how we can apply this to other new systems when we connect up.”

The HDIRS project is one of many regional initiatives to share data, part of the Ontario government's ehealth agenda. Canada Health Infoway (Infoway), an independent, not-for-profit organization funded by the federal government, has provided $ 20.6 million and eHealth Ontario has provided $17 million in funding for the project which supports the transfer of images and reports between diagnostic imaging departments at hospitals in Central, Central East, South East and Toronto LHINs.

Since going “live” this past July, Brockville General Hospital is now part of a storage system of more than two million exams annually.

“We are the second hospital in the South East LHIN to get on board with HDIRS (Belleville being the first),” says Melchers. “That makes us only the second hospital in Eastern Ontario to become part of a diagnostic imaging information sharing system of this size.”


Definitely something to smile about:  The Brockville General Hospital HDIRS Project team stands with one of the central network switches that made the connection to HDIRS possible—Joe Henry, Hardware Technician; Joe Muise, System Analyst; John Montgomery, Network Analyst; Rene Melchers, IM/IT Manager; and Judy Fowler, Charge Technologist Diagnostic Imaging. Missing is Jodi Hunter, Health Records Manager.


For more information contact:

Maggie Wheeler Communications Officer BROCKVILLE GENERAL HOSPITAL 613-345-5649 Ext. 1-1504

Healthy people – Outstanding Care

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