NHS Scotland has adopted a new cloud-based platform providing assistance and tools to radiology clinicians.

Radiologists across Scotland report on five million scans a year, detecting bone breaks and fractures, and serious illnesses and cancers.

The new 10-year agreement is between NHS National Services Scotland and Sectra, an international medical imaging IT company based in Sweden, which hosts the cloud platform.

Sectra will provide a fully manged software as a service (SaaS), Sectra One Cloud, to all of Scotland’s 14 regional NHS boards, and to NHS Jubilee, which hosts the Scottish National Radiology Reporting Service.

Clinicians will be able to utilise radiology, breast imaging, and orthopaedics modules available through the enterprise imaging service.

Implementation will involve the migration of more than 55 million radiology studies to a single instance of Sectra’s enterprise imaging service.

Managed through Sectra One Cloud, the service aims to provide ongoing support and upgrades for users, local business continuity within each NHS board, as well as enabling ease of scalability for NHS Scotland’s future requirements.

“Our new partnership with Sectra will provide Scotland’s NHS radiology teams with an enterprise imaging service that will support our professionals as they deliver efficient and effective diagnoses for patients,” Mary Morgan, the chief executive of the NHS National Services Scotland, said.

“The service creates additional potential to support the direction set out in the new Scotland Radiology Model and opens up further possibilities around enhanced cross-site working.”

All of NHS Scotland’s acute radiology, orthopaedic, and breast screening services will be covered by the new contract, which also creates the potential to extend support to additional diagnostic services in the future and allow the exploration of further technology.

A single log-in profile will allow clinicians to access imaging from their patients in a single national source, accessible regardless of where in Scotland imaging acquisition has taken place.

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Further, collaboration across clinical specialities will be supported by having a single system, enabling radiologist and orthopaedic teams to access the same surgery and planning decisions support.

“The potential for NHS Scotland from embracing a cloud-based enterprise imaging system is exciting,” Jane Rendall, UK and Ireland managing director for Sectra, said.

“This will create new opportunities for innovation and for collaboration between Scotland’s NHS radiology teams. Scotland’s NHS boards are known around the world for delivering excellence in care, and I look forward to Sectra supporting their professionals in the years ahead.”

The contract was signed in December 2023 for an initial 10-year term, with two optional extension periods. Sectra will replace Scotland’s current supplier contract in 2026.