The new £545 million flagship hospital for Birmingham, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, part of University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHB), is opening its doors to patients. The new facility has taken four years to build incorporating an extensive range of the latest imaging innovations from Siemens Healthcare in a modern and progressive environment.
The new hospital will take its place as the largest single floor critical care unit in Europe with more beds than any other single-site teaching hospital. It is the primary receiving hospital for British military casualties and a regional trauma centre for the West Midlands. The multi-million pound investment in diagnostic imaging solutions will broaden the range of procedures offered to patients and deliver a greater level of diagnostic confidence for clinicians.
Siemens Healthcare has worked in partnership with the Trust to install four MRI systems: a MAGNETOM Verio 3T, two Avanto 1.5T and Espree 1.5T; four CT scanners: two SOMATOM Definition AS+, a Definition AS and a Definition Dual Source; and gamma camera systems: a Symbia S SPECT, Symbia T TruePoint SPECT•CT and a Symbia T16 TruePoint SPECT•CT combining a variable angle dual detector SPECT with 16-slice CT. The pace of innovation will continue over the next year with the installation of Siemens’ recently launched syngo.via to power multi-modality image reporting.
“The installation of these state-of-the-art imaging solutions marks a huge leap forward in our capabilities, allowing us to do so much more for patients and placing us at the forefront of many clinical techniques,” said Paul Brettle, Imaging X-ray Group Manager at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust.
“The new hospital facilities are world-class and the suite of imaging solutions adds to the provision of next generation healthcare for the city of Birmingham and surrounding areas.”
The Definition AS+ CT system is situated in a dedicated emergency department and is tasked with performing triple rule-out scans to speed up diagnosis for chest pain of unknown origin. The Symbia T systems in the Nuclear Medicine Department will give the Trust hybrid imaging capabilities with SPECT for the first time and will be used for cancer management, including lesion localisation and disease assessment. The Symbia T16 system will also be equipped with IQ•SPECT, Siemens’ new technology for comprehensive cardiac evaluation including perfusion, attenuation correction and calcium scoring in five minutes. IQ SPECT technology will be used to improve the Trust’s myocardial perfusion service.
“What is really important to us is improving the scope and quality of our service. SPECT•CT will give us increased diagnostic confidence and the ability to localise abnormalities on SPECT scans, as well as improved quantitative information for radionuclide therapy dosimetry,” said Chris Boivin, Head of Nuclear Medicine at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust. “The IQ SPECT system will greatly reduce patient scan times and make the experience much more comfortable for them. The ability to perform simultaneous calcium scoring will improve diagnostic accuracy. We are looking forward to expanding the scope of our diagnostic offerings with the new technology and giving patients a faster, more efficient service.”
“The new Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham is a milestone for Birmingham as the first new acute hospital in the area for 70 years. By opening its doors to patients and in offering the very latest medical imaging examinations, the community and returning UK military personnel can be assured of a high standard of care,” said Mark Hall, Regional Sales Manager at Siemens Healthcare.
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