East Midlands Imaging Network (Emrad)

EMRAD is a partnership of eight NHS trusts (Chesterfield Royal Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Kettering General Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Northampton General Hospital NHS Trust, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (host organisation), Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust, University Hospitals of Leicester and University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust). These trusts run 11 hospitals, covering more than five million patients. EMRAD is a collaboration of all radiology team personnel across the East Midlands. It is supported by a small, core team based at the National Centre for Sports and Exercise Medicine at Loughborough University, an Olympics 2012 legacy building which provides a neutral space for working between partner organisations. EMRAD launched in 2013 with the objective to create a new, common digital radiology system. Its work was supported with the award of ‘vanguard’ status by NHS England’s new care models programme which ran from 2016 to 2018. This pioneering work saw the East Midlands become the first health community in the UK where NHS hospitals could quickly and easily share diagnostic images such as x-rays and scans. The cloud-based image-sharing system has set the national benchmark for a new model of clinical collaboration within radiology services in the NHS.