When two-year-old Peter was admitted to hospital with stomach pains doctors were worried.
Peter (not his real name) had developed a condition called intussusception - a bowel obstruction in which the walls of the intestines press against one another, causing swelling and discomfort.
Non-invasive treatment to relieve the obstruction by performing an air reduction - where a tube is put into the child's rectum and air pumped into the intestine - appeared to fail, leaving the toddler facing a major operation.
John Somers, a consultant radiologist at Queen's Medical Centre, Nottingham, who treated Peter said they had been keen to avoid this.
Helps decision making
"It is major, major surgery. It is abdominal surgery under general anaesthesia, involving opening of the abdominal cavity," he said.
"He may have required a resection (removal) of a section of bowel. He would have been in hospital for several days and taken several weeks to recover.
"This just gave me, in the middle of the night, a lot more confidence"
"Apart from the usual risks for surgery - including wound infection - there are potential long-term risks for adhesive obstruction of the bowel in the future."
"With intussusception resection there is also a risk for sepsis (blood poisoning) from necrotic (dead) bowel during resection."
However, the new Picture Archiving and Communications System (Pacs), recently introduced throughout the NHS, came to his rescue.
One of the main benefits of Pacs is that it allows clinicians to share images with their colleagues in different locations, to view a patient's history, compare new images with old, and collaborate on a diagnosis.
Dr Somers took advantage of the technology to call up all the images that had been taken of Peter's troublesome bowel.
"I had the surgeon here. We sat down and I went into the Derby system, where Peter was first treated, looked the child up and could see their scan and so I was confident they had made the right diagnosis.
"I could look at their air reduction and say: 'Yes they did treat it and reduce it and it did go back, but now it has recurred,' which it does in about 1%-2% of cases.
"Looking at this I could say it was worth me having another go. If they hadn't reduced it in Derby I might have said: 'No, this child needs surgery.'"
Other benefits
The ability to share images and reports across trusts is only in place in some trusts across England at the moment, but in the future Pacs aim to offer 100% access to digital images in hospitals across England.
"Trusts are seeing the release of valuable storage space in hospitals, improvements in workflow efficiency and, in some cases, cost savings of up to £300,000 after being live for only 12 months."
Dr Somers said that Pacs had changed his way of working.
It meant X-rays could be compared and contrasted more easily and, as a result, problems were spotted sooner - leading to speedier diagnoses and treatments.
Erika Denton is a consultant radiologist and medical director for the Pacs programme and the national clinical lead for diagnostic imaging at the Department of Health.
She said the new system was also bringing about real cost benefits to the NHS.
"Pacs is bringing about a fall in the number of consultations or operations being postponed or cancelled because, of course, there are no longer lost or misplaced films," Dr Denton said.
"Trusts are seeing the release of valuable storage space in hospitals, improvements in workflow efficiency and, in some cases, cost savings of up to £300,000 after being live for only 12 months."
Catherine Lee Elliott, consultant radiologist at Poole Hospital NHS Trust, agreed the system was easy to work with.
"There are huge benefits throughout all the workflow we have," she said.
"For a start I don't have to get out of my chair to find work to do, it's all there waiting for me on my work list."
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