National Imaging Registry functional capabilities

Clinicians can:

• Discover imaging-related documents held in other connected organisations
  • either by searching all organisations onboarded to NIR, or by deliberately limiting to a subset of the organisations
• Search across participating regions using a single query
• See what records exist before retrieval
• Filter by date range
• Permanently exclude from NIR searches entities that are already within their existing systems search capabilities

User outcome

• Improved visibility of external imaging records
• Reduced need to contact other organisations manually
• Faster awareness of prior studies and related documents

Clinicians can:

• Retrieve imaging-related documents from connected organisations
• Access retrieved documents through their local viewer (where integrated)

User outcome

• Seamless retrieval through existing viewing workflows
• No manual file transfer processes required
• System-to-system retrieval handled by NIR routing

Status: Available by end of March

Clinicians can:

• Retrieve imaging study images from connected external repositories
• Access images referenced by shared imaging manifests
• View externally stored studies within their local viewer where supported

User outcome

• Access prior imaging across organisational boundaries
• Reduced repeat imaging due to missing priors
• Faster clinical comparison and decision support

What will be added

• Modern search and retrieval methods
• Improved compatibility with newer clinical systems
• More consistent search behaviour

Expected clinician impact

• No workflow change
• Broader system compatibility
• Improved long-term reliability

What will be added

• Central national index of imaging and document records
• More complete discovery results
• Reduced reliance on multiple regional registries

Expected clinician impact

• More reliable search completeness
• Improved confidence in discovery results
• Better national coverage over time

What will be added

• Imaging producers can register records directly
• Faster appearance of new records in search results

Expected clinician impact

• Reduced delay between study creation and discoverability
• More up-to-date cross-site visibility

What will be added

• Web-based image retrieval methods
• Better support for browser and lightweight viewers
• Improved performance and scalability

Expected clinician impact

• Support for more viewer types
• Better performance for remote access
• Enables newer clinical applications

What will be added

• Older repositories can integrate without replacement
• Gradual transition support

Expected clinician impact

• Broader data availability
• Lower onboarding barriers for organisations
• Stable transition period

NIR does not:

• Replace PACS or RIS systems
• Act as a clinical viewer
• Store imaging centrally
• Change diagnostic workflows
• Modify images or reports
• Make clinical decisions

NIR provides discovery and routing, not diagnosis or image management.

• Only connected organisations’ data is discoverable
• Viewer behaviour depends on supplier integration
• Some systems support document discovery before full image retrieval
• Coverage increases as onboarding expands
• Performance depends partly on source system responsiveness

For clinicians

• Access occurs through existing viewers
• No new login required (where integrated)
• Minimal workflow change
• Retrieval is on-demand
• External studies appear alongside local context