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HAY RIVER - "What used to take days, quite literally could take minutes."

That's how Dave Wittig, project manager with Healthtech, describes the digital imaging system that will eliminate film X-rays and other diagnostic images.

Dwayne Osbaldeston stares at a digital diagnostic image with reverence in H.H. Williams Hospital in Hay River, on Wednesday. The NWT is going out with the old and in with digital X-rays, ultrasounds and CT scans, which will reduce patient wait times and cut down on medical travel. - Herb Mathisen/NNSL photo

The diagnostic imaging picture archiving and communications system -- soon to be set up in 22 NWT communities -- will send digital images from across the territory to a radiologist in Yellowknife for examination.

Wittig said it took three minutes for an image to make it from Hay River to Yellowknife, during a test last week. Using film it used to take days to physically transport the image across the lake and back.

Wittig was in Hay River to announce the installation of the system in H.H. Williams Hospital – the third institution in the NWT to implement the technology.

All images will be collected in a NWT-wide database in Yellowknife and will be available for viewing by any health care professional authorized on the system.

Eventually, the images will be accessible by specialists not available in the NWT, residing in Edmonton.

Wittig said NWT residents will see their wait times shrink drastically when it comes to X-ray and ultrasound based diagnoses, and could also mean fewer – and more efficient – cases of medical travel.

Al Woods, CEO of Hay River Health and Social Services Authority, used the example of a resident outside Yellowknife needing a diagnosis on a medical issue.

He said, a specialist at Stanton could look at an image instantly, and if Stanton was not able to deal with the problem, the patient could be sent directly to Edmonton, instead of being sent to Yellowknife for tests first.

"Decisions on patient care are less lengthy," he said.

Woods also said hospitals will also save on space currently used to store film.

Before Hay River got the technology, Stanton Territorial Hospital in Yellowknife and the Fort Smith Health Centre were the only hospitals in the territory to go filmless.

The Inuvik Regional Hospital will go live at the end of April.

An additional 18 community health centres are expected to begin using the technology by June 2010, said Wittig, adding the system will allow images to be sent straight to Stanton.

Dwayne Osbaldeston, a diagnostic imaging technician in Hay River, gushed about the technology in the hospital's trauma room last Wednesday.

Osbaldeston said doctors can zoom in on specific areas of the image, can invert the colour to better examine things like fractures – that come to light when the picture goes dark – and can even bring up the patients' historical diagnostic image record with the click of a mouse.

Small said the system is very user-friendly.

She said if a patient came into the trauma room, an X-ray could be taken and immediately flash up on a screen in the room, instead of having doctors run from room to room while the film develops.

The cost for the project is $5.9 million. Canada Health Infoway, a not-for-profit organization funded by the federal government, is contributing $4.3 million, while the government of the NWT is paying for the remaining $1.6 million.

Wittig said Canada has moved away from using film, stating 85 to 90 per cent of the country is on the digital system.