Vendor Neutral Archive
By SYNAPPS SOLUTIONS LTD
SynApps’ VNA solutions are designed from the outset to be vendor-neutral and do not rely on a particular brand of storage. Rather, they are built on a flexible enterprise content management (ECM) platform Documentum which can intelligently handle and share any type of content, DICOM and Non-DICOM from any source. This allows NHS Trusts to work towards a complete electronic medical record for patients – combining medical images with other, unstructured patient data. Any combination of this content can then be called up in a number of different ways according to the needs of the user such as via an existing EPR for example.
Taking an ECM approach to patient data also allows Trusts to simultaneously address other important government targets, for example on image life-cycle management, security and scalability.
SynApps’ VNA solutions are affordable and straightforward to deploy too. Recognising that Trusts may have already invested extensively in PACS technology, SynApps provides a painless migration path, protecting these investments and allowing trusts to develop their capabilities at their own pace.
Details
Our VNA is based on the OTXT Healthcare Information Platform (HIP) with implementation, configuration and support services provided by SynApps Solutions (SynApps).
The OTXT HIP is underpinned by the market leading Enterprise Content Management platform, Documentum. The Vendor Neutral Archive (VNA) repository for DICOM and the EDM/XDS repository for non-DICOM share a single, common architecture; negating the need for different administration functions, retention management, security and storage infrastructure that would otherwise result from the implementation of disparate solutions based on multiple repositories that are only integrated at the user interface. This approach greatly reduces the cost of ownership and overall complexity in on-going upgrades and maintenance. The HIP platform also incorporates the IHE compliant Cross Document Sharing Registry (XDS) module for sharing DICOM and non-DICOM patient records internally and externally as well as the Cross Community Access (XCA) module for regional or national image sharing.
The OTXT HIP can ingest all content, whether DICOM or Non-DICOM, together with Patient Records or Corporate Records. As content management needs grow larger and more complex, the OTXT Documentum solution efficiently manages ever-increasing volumes of content, high traffic loads, more users, and complex business processes; and it does so cost effectively with continued high performance. Our solution provides full-featured archive management functionality with high availability and disaster recovery configured as part of the solution stack. Effective solution implementation through the adoption of virtualisation and Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) also provides a significant reduction in hardware, storage and associated power costs.
The OTXT VNA solution is one of the only true vendor neutral solutions on the market and has been proven to provide a secure, scalable and reliable platform to ingest DICOM images from existing PACS systems and archives. From its first release nearly 20 years ago, the solution architecture has been designed to be vendor agnostic in terms of storage systems, operating systems and relational database platform and therefore provides the customer with complete agility and future proofing. From an XDS Repository/EDM perspective, the same Documentum platform provides a comprehensive set of core services such as security, single sign-on, search (including full text, all metadata and Boolean combinations), version control, document lifecycle management, business process management, transformation services and retention management. These can be accessed via a variety of role based user interfaces including Documentum xCP, J4Care Zero Footprint Viewer and, optionally, the Mobius clinical viewer from Fortrus. Integration with the existing and future EPR solution client interface will also enable access to the complete clinical record.
It should also be noted that the same platform could be used for non-clinical document and records management within the customer such as HR Records and Accounts Payable invoice record management. As such, the platform approach to content management can deliver significant savings in terms of information consolidation and efficient storage management as well as being a fundamental enabler for business transformation. Furthermore, our solution provides the capability to dramatically accelerate the retirement of a number of existing legacy applications by moving content to the Clinical Archive.