Historically, Trusts would either print off or save to a drive patient data for transportation between the mobile units and the Trust Head Quarters. In addition, the Department of Health guidelines state that scans must be checked by at least two clinicians and reported on no later than five days following the scan. With this in mind, Trusts have been looking for alternative solutions to move towards paperless operation of mobile screening units. In 2016 DEOS partnered with Bence to provide a complete service offering a greater level of support and maintenance for its customers going forward, aiming to save the Trust time and expense required to transport these files as well as reducing risk to these being lost or damaged enroute (i.e. data security).

Bence invested in research and development to be able to provide a suitable solution to meet this growing requirement. There were challenges such as the size of the files and therefore the speed of the uplink needed to bring the data transfer to a reasonable timeframe. In addition access was required to the chosen hospital’s PACS system. After consultation with two health authorities agreement was reached and a trial was initiated. In order to prevent delays during the scanning day the 240 average daily image generation was buffered onto an on board server with the images being sent overnight.

This has now been developed into a wireless connectivity platform that can provide the best of both worlds to mobile screening operators by bringing the option of delivering secure connectivity using both 3G|4G and satellite. Security is provided by our image management software which encrypts all data and transports it over fully AES 256 encrypted VPN’s. Encrypted images are sent directly to the machine or VM at the Trust HQ, where the HQ machine will decrypt the images and submit them to PACs over DICOM, before updating the MIS system to show image completion.

Bence are now the nominate reseller and the partnership has worked well securing contracts throughout the screening services in the UK. This totally managed solution will aim to help mobile screening operators to move towards paperless screening by offering a combination of services and consultancy. To date this system has proven to be a great success with a growing customer base on the DEOS Platform.