The Sault Ste. Marie Group Health Centre is converting to digital diagnostic imaging with the help of the Sault Area Hospital (SAH).

The partnership is part of the Pan-Northern Ontario Picture Archiving and Communications Systems Project (PNOPP), which aims to bring digital imaging services to health-care providers across the North. PNOPP falls under the province’s Pan-Northern Information and Communication Technology Blueprint, a guide to integrate electronic health-care systems from one provincial border to the other.

The Group Health Centre will now join the five Northern Ontario hospitals that are equipped with Picture Archiving and Communications Systems (PACS) and share access to the Radiology Information System.

The GHC, a multi-specialty, ambulatory care health facility, already has a full diagnostic suite and two radiologists. Once it converts to digital imaging, it will be on the same network as the hospitals.

“This is another example of us working together,” said Greg Punch, director of corporate development for the Group Health Association, the not-for-profit operators of the Group Health Centre (GHC). “We’re taking our network and interfacing it with the hospital’s system. The Sault Area Hospital is supplying staff to help with the implementation.”

“Our network can talk to their network so we can order results, get results read and returned, and do the billing...when a patient has to go for an out of town consultation, we used to put the information on a CD. Now, we’ve eliminated most of that,” said Punch.
The GHC’s radiology department will also be greener by reducing the number of film X-rays and the chemicals required to develop them. It will also free up some physical storage space as well.

Punch is confident that the change will improve service. Any images taken will be sent to the hospital for storage. Those files, in turn, will be sent to a Diagnotic Imaging Repository, which provides electronic storage for PACS. The GHC will also have access to that repository.

“The goal is to have one central repository for all digital imaging that could be accessed by all care providers across the North,” said Marc Bouchard, Director of Information and Communications Technology at SAH in a January 2009 press release.
Punch estimates the cost will be about $800,000. FedNor, PNOPP and the GHA are all pitching in to bring the project to fruition.

The system is expected to be fully operational by September 2009.