250 million PACS images were recently migrated by Pukka-j on behalf of four NHS Trusts located in the North West of England.  The Pukka-j PACS migration solution was deployed at Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust; St Helens and Knowsley NHS Trust; Aintree University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and the Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. 

Although the commissions from the North West Trusts were separate projects, the end goal proved to be the same.  The Trusts employed Pukka-j to localise PACS images from a local and central data store, provided by CSC, their existing PACS local service provider.

The trend in PACS localisation is a result of PACS local service provider contracts expiring in June 2013.  For those Trusts wishing to implement a replacement PACS with a new provider,  it is a sensible approach for all of the PACS data to be migrated from the existing system and held in one place to enable the Trust to be the data owner and controller, prior to a new PACS being implemented.

Kevin Wilson, Technical Director of Pukka-j comments:  “Every migration is unique however with the LSP solutions in place we were faced with the added complexity of data being flushed from the Trusts local PACS and residing in a remote Central Data Store. Our solutions coped well with the challenge, completing the projects within a timely fashion, whilst ensuring the migration process had no impact on the live PACS environment. Until an existing PACS is no longer in use by a Trust, Pukka-j performs a regular synchronisation process to guarantee recent images acquired and imported images with historic dates in PACS are continually localised to the Pukka-j environment.”    

The main advantage of Pukka-j PACS localisation solutions is the flexibility of the products, which allow migration to be scheduled out-of-hours, with options for storing data temporarily, or in a long term archive enabling data to be cleansed and migrated to a new PACS  or VNA supplier as and when required.

Pukka-j continues to support the North West Trusts with their roadmap for PACS replacement and as a result Pukka-j has received additional commissions for providing the Trusts with a mix of product, including VNA, technical consultation, bespoke software and integration services.