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| SMI to Become Fully Choose and Book Compliant Specialist Medical Imaging (SMI) is to become fully Choose and Book compliant, ensuring that millions of NHS patients have rapid access to its imaging services. SMI specialises in providing Non Obstetric and Obstetric ultrasound and Osteoporosis - DXA services to all sectors of healthcare. Bookings for its 30 mobile scanning units are currently managed by the EMMA online electronic medical system from Ascensus. Ascensus will partner with Quicksilva, an independent provider of software and services to the public sector, to integrate EMMA with the NHS Data Spine making available appointments instantly accessible for SMI's fixed and mobile scanning units. The partnership will not only potentially reduce waiting times for patients but it will shorten the time for results to be reported to GPs. Where SMI services are available, over 90 per cent of patients are scanned within two weeks of being referred. Integrating EMMA with the Spine will ensure that GPs, Acute Hospitals and Primary Care Trusts, can access SMI's appointment diary directly and immediately advise patients of where and when they will be able to have a scan. Companies such as SMI play an important role in increasing patient choice, as in some instances the nearest scanning facility might be quite some distance away, but SMI may well run a mobile surgery that is more conveniently located. This helps the NHS with its target that all patients should be scanned within six weeks of being referred. EMMA enables SMI to manage the appointment diaries for both its headquarters and its 30 mobile units. Quicksilva's flagship product, Spinal Tap, will be hosted with EMMA in a secure environment where it will act as a central message broker to the Spine. Spinal Tap will enable any form of communication (LDAP, SOAP, ebXML) from EMMA to interact with the NHS Spine by acting as an intelligent hub to interpret the HL7 message format that carries patient data into the Spine. The hosted model removes the IT burden for SMI of having to maintain complex systems in house and allows Ascensus to constantly ensure EMMA remains compliant by working to a consistent platform. write your comments about the article :: © 2008 Computing News :: home page |