NHS CfH is reporting that their PACS (Picture Archiving and Communications System) programme team have been ‘Highly Commended’ at the 2006 e-Government national awards.

The award acknowledges “proven team-working or partnership activity which has delivered more than the sum of the parts” and the accolade went to the IMPACT Programme team of the Home Office and the Police Information Technology Organisation.

PACS is now in use in 66 NHS trusts across England which, combined with trusts who had installed PACS prior to the NPfIT, means that 64% of NHS trusts are using PACS systems.

Dr John Somers and David Stimpson were on hand to collect the ‘highly commended’ award at the ceremony.

Dr Somers said: “The work that has gone into each and every PACS installation so far has been phenomenal and I’m proud to be part of a team that has consistently demonstrated the delivery of new systems to improve the lives of patients and hospital staff.”

PACS Programme Head Mary Barber added: “To be highly commended is a great honour for the team and is a fitting recognition of their hard work over the last two and a half years.

“The combined effort of the central programme team - clinicians, experienced radiographers and managers in SHAs and Trusts - and our suppliers, is what makes the PACS programme continue to deliver.”

The NHS aims to complete PACS deployments by March 2007.

Merge Healthcare has announced the release of FUSION matrix PACS version 2.1.

The latest release of this software introduces the ability to query and retrieve studies from third party DICOM sources, reserve studies, and mark studies as preliminary. Another tool included in this new version is triangulation, whereby users can define a target point on an image to view the corresponding anatomical position in other series.

“We are very pleased with this newest version of the FUSION Matrix PACS,” says Dr. Ramin Abrahim of Washington Radiology Associates. “We have already seen efficiencies in study assignment and retrieval, and the radiologists are happy to have even more flexibility in their reading worklist. Graphic marking of high priority studies on the worklist ensures prompt reading of those studies. The triangulation feature is invaluable in analysis of complex structures and pathology in MRI studies with numerous sequences in multiple planes.”