Nothing beats the live experience

Working together to create a ‘Clinical Skills room’, the University of Leeds, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, and Agfa are offering diagnostic radiography students a unique educational opportunity, while helping address a big healthcare challenge in the UK.

Although many universities have X-ray practice rooms on-campus, for safety reasons these cannot use radiation or real patients. “And of course, they are missing the element of the hospital atmosphere, where anything can happen, and usually does,” comments Helen Harcus, Programme lead for diagnostic radiography at the University of Leeds.

The core component of the Clinical Skills room is the DR 600, supplied by Agfa. “It was clear we needed a direct radiography (DR) room. With the DR 600, the students can prepare for different equipment situations they may come across. For example, the autopositioning is very useful, but of course not all X-ray systems offer it. On the DR 600, it can be turned on or off, so the students can experience both ways, and can also see how it affects their work.” Helen adds.

The high-quality X-ray room is also a draw for the Seacroft Hospital. While the room is used 4 days a week by students, on the 5th day the hospital has full use of this top-performance room, significantly increasing X-ray capacity.

For Agfa, the bidirectional collaboration between industry and academia at a core educational level opens up a new platform for testing innovation in the areas of intelligence and user models, explains Georges Espada, Head of Digital Radiography at Agfa. “By enabling opportunities to monitor and learn, it offers an incubator for possible future extensions of our AI (Artificial Intelligence) applications. And it will be the source of new white papers and other educational material that will benefit the healthcare sector at large.”