THE world's largest IT project has Imperial researchers to thank for part of its latest billion pound facelift.

Professor Richard Kitney

Technology developed by College researchers and spinout company ComMedica, will play a key role in wiring up the National Health Service (NHS) in England with a NHS care record service.

A total of 50 million NHS patients will receive individual NHS care records, detailing key treatments and care within the health service - information accessible to the medical profession from anywhere in the country.

Part of a £5 billion national programme for IT, the fifth and final contract to deliver the service was announced by the Department of Health last month. Imperial-developed technology will be used in four out of five successful regional consortiums.

"Healthcare providers today face the challenge of coping with the vast amount of data created in the modern clinical environment," explained Professor Richard Kitney, department of bioengineering and a director of ComMedica.

"Imperial technology will help to seamlessly integrate existing equipment into the new network and allow clinicians to securely access all forms of health record and complex imaging data, such as X-rays, ultrasound or MRI scans, at the point of clinical decision-making.

"For too long, the NHS has struggled with inefficient paper and film-based medical recordkeeping. The national IT programme will catapult the NHS into 21st century healthcare."

Imperial researchers have worked with an international consortium of scientists for the past five years, developing the model for the nine-year implementation project, which uses web-based technology and will work on any computer.

A key part of the programme involves connecting all existing NHS hospital equipment into a common software system. Unique technology developed by Imperial and ComMedica, links equipment manufactured before and after 1997, when the international digital image communication in medicine (DICOM) standard was adopted.

"The DICOM standard ensures interconnectivity of devices that carry medical images such as CT or MRI scans on a common network," continued the professor. "Software linking DICOM-compliant equipment requires a DICOM library. Imperial and ComMedica have an added advantage because our system contains the most extensive DICOM library in the world, comprising around half a million lines of code."

Picture archiving and communication systems (PACS), that enable universal sharing of all forms of clinical information, including diagnostic-quality medical images, will also play an important role in the national programme for IT.

Using Imperial's PACS will allow clinicians to view medical images on demand, on any standard PC or Mac rather than in special reading rooms, while costing a tenth of the million pound price of traditional PACS.