PACS may be compromised
 Problems with the new NHS broadband links, known as N3, have left some NHS hospitals with computer connections speeds too slow for them to effectively use planned new Picture Archiving and Communications Services (PACS), according to a report from E-Health Insider, an e-zine for health service IT managers and users.
While BT, the contractor for N3, has delivered over 7,000 NHS connections at the speeds required, problems are occurring when N3 connections meet NHSnet, the private NHS network managed, ironically, by BT.
However, one user says that cost cutting is the problem. In a post to the E-Health Insider website, he says “It appears that N3 itself is throttled back, to save money, because it is ‘only 2% utilised’ at present. This is both at its heart, and on individual N3 links, so people who think they have 100Mb links only have 5.5Mb at present.”
While ‘up’ speeds into NHSnet are at up to the 87.5Mbs speeds contracted for, the ‘down’ speeds can be as slow as 5Mb, far slower than the 47.5Mb speeds contracted for in the N3 contract. One hospital is reported to have experienced ‘down’ speeds as slow as 1.5Mb.
Speeds as slow as 5Mbs for an entire acute hospital would make it virtually impossible to access digital images over a network. Under the National Programme for IT (NPfIT) Local Service Providers are meant to deliver PACS across local high-speed networks with all images older than a year stored and retrieved from remote data centres known as 'Cluster Data Stores'.
PACS was meant to be one of the early NPfIT services to be implemented, providing benefits to patients and clinicians, but has run into lengthy delays. Implementations were due to have begun last summer, but by the beginning of this month only two were underway.
PACS is due to be fully implemented across England by 2007. In the North East and Eastern cluster no PACS supplier has yet been awarded a contract.
Click here to go to E-Health Insider.
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