New Queen Elizabeth Hospital now open

With a Somatom Definition Dual Source are (from left) radiographers Jane Herbert and Henna Sultana, clinical team leaders Deborah Howell and Paul Fergusson, regional sales manager Mark Hall and imaging x-ray group manager Paul Brettle.

The £545 million Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham has opened following a four-year build schedule.

It contains the largest single-floor critical care unit in Europe with more beds than any other single-site teaching hospital.  It is the primary receiving hospital for British military casualties and a regional trauma centre for the West Midlands. 

Siemens Healthcare has worked in partnership with the trust to install four MRI systems: a Magnetom Verio 3T, two Avanto 1.5T and an Espree 1.5T as well as four CT scanners: two Somatom Definition AS+, a Definition AS and a Definition Dual Source, plus gamma camera systems: a Symbia S SPECT, Symbia T TruePoint SPECT/CT and a Symbia T16 TruePoint SPECT/CT combining a variable angle dual detector SPECT with 16-slice CT. 

The pace of innovation will continue over the next year with the installation of syngo.via to power multi-modality image reporting.

See the full report on the fron page of the August 2010 issue of RAD Magazine.