Remote mobile Breast Screening Units directed to Central Hospital image reading desks

Project Mercury aimed to establish and prove the commercial viability of a new satellite-based communications service that will end the isolation of Mobile Breast Screening Units deployed across the UK as part of the breast cancer prevention and detection programme of the National Health Service (NHS). The Mercury project aimed to develop, integrate, test and demonstrate an effective and commercially viable managed service providing the end-to-end secure transmission of medical images through the use of multiple space assets (satcom, satnav) from remote mobile Breast Screening Units direct to Central Hospital image reading desks. The ultimate objective of Project Mercury was to establish an incontrovertible business case for the adoption of a new managed service that can deliver full communications via satellite to mobile breast screening units in the UK. Breast cancer comprises worldwide 22.9% of all cancers in women. In 2008, breast cancer caused 458,503 deaths worldwide. The likelihood of survival and recovery varies greatly depending on when the cancer stage is detected. Public authorities of some developed countries such as UK have therefore started investing in prevention and early detection of breast cancer, which helps to better define the most appropriate treatment and substantially improve the outcomes. The routine performance of non-invasive (X-Ray, MR imaging and sometimes ultrasounds) examinations (also called mammography) is sufficient for routine preventive check-ups and is able (sometimes with additional tests in case of cancer suspicion) to warrant excisional biopsy as the definitive diagnostic and curative method. In the United Kingdom, around 180 mobile Breast Screening Units are deployed across the country for daily use, which goes along recommendations of the NHS (National Health Service) Breast Screening Programme established in 1987 to mitigate breast cancer progress. The introduction of a telemedicine service via satellite greatly supported and improved the effectiveness of such breast cancer screening campaigns, in particular by meeting the following needs: •Reducing the risk of clinical data loss during their transfer between the imaging device and the reading desks of radiologists, •Heading towards a paperless/paperlight working environment, •Increase the number of scanned patient per day, in particular by reducing the number of no-shows.