Ulster Hospital switches on PACS

A County Down hospital has become the latest to join Northern Ireland's picture archiving and communications system

The NIPACS service was launched in Ulster Hospital, part of the South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust, on 26 November 2009. Across Northern Ireland, the system will cost £31m over 10 years and link together picture and archiving systems throughout Northern Ireland.

Ulster Hospital's PACS system is supplied by Swedish company Setra, which has opened by a satellite office in Belfast.

"Over the course of next year, all health and social care trusts in Northern Ireland will have this state of the art equipment installed, which will improve efficiency and productivity within the health and social care sector," said health minister Michael McGimpsey at the opening of the system.

Kable senior analyst Victor Almeida, said: "This is a major step in the modernisation of the health system, but it is quite late compared to England where, despite some delays, PACS roll out has been completed."

• NI health department awards £70m deal

  Northern Ireland's Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety has awarded HP a wide ranging ICT framework contract

• Heart of England plans £10m record scan

  May also saw multimillion pound contracts awarded by Scotland's health service for address management software and Northern Ireland for GP systems

• Northern Ireland integrates organisations and IT

  Northern Ireland is merging many of its health and social services organisations, continuing a pattern of rationalisation that includes computing, writes Paul Gosling