The Pilgrim Hospital, Boston, part of United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust, recently upgraded its Nuclear Medicine department with the installation of a Symbia S SPECT from Siemens Healthcare.
The hospital has also installed Europe’s first Symbia.net Clinical Workflow Server, a cost-effective, client-server solution for the remote processing and reading of Nuclear Medicine data.
Symbia.net gives staff access to full processing and reading capabilities from two departmental PCs situated on a different floor to the scanning equipment. A virtually unlimited number of client computers can be installed remotely, meaning that the Trust can increase its resourcing as needs evolve. Manual interaction is also reduced as physicians no longer need to wait for a technologist to grant access to view processed files.
The Symbia S at Pilgrim Hospital benefits from innovative time saving solutions including an Automatic Quality Control (AQC) feature and automatic collimator changer. The changer is integrated with the patient bed and eliminates the need for a separate storage cart, thus saving space and speeding up collimator changing. With AQC, the hospital has freed up around four hours per week of routine scanning time, with QC checks now taking place automatically during the night. Results are also more reliable and reproducible.
The hospital has also recently installed Siemens’ c.cam cardiac gamma camera to further enhance the nuclear cardiology service within the Trust.
The open and friendly system is easy to use and features a reclining patient position, which minimises motion artifacts for improved image quality. It is also compact with a small footprint and lightweight collimators that are easily changed by hand. The system is also linked to the remote reporting PCs via Symbia.net.
“The installation of two innovative pieces of equipment and advanced software in the form of Symbia.net has created a state-of-the-art Nuclear Medicine service at Pilgrim Hospital,” said Dr Philip Cosgriff, Consultant Physicist at United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust.
“The Symbia’s automated features and remote data access from Symbia.net greatly assists in improving efficiency and productivity.”
“It is great news that United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust has received Symbia.net and is benefiting from remote reporting capabilities, including viewing, processing and copying to PACS,” said Anna Wojcieszyn, Product and Applications Specialist at Siemens Healthcare.
“We look forward to driving the implementation process and witnessing the change in patient care it will deliver at the Trust.
