To date there is no national reporting and learning system specifically intended to analyse and learn from incidents in diagnostic imaging, MRI and nuclear medicine in the UK.

The Clinical Imaging Board (CIB) recognised the need for such a system for diagnostic imaging and agreed this work would be taken forward by UKHSA, who would co-ordinate the project with input from the professional bodies.

The Medical Exposures Group (MEG) in UKHSA has established a multidisciplinary working party to take this work to a national level. The incident classification and pathway coding system first developed for the CIB has been reviewed to mirror the patient pathway from referral to reporting, rather than focussing on the IR(ME)R duty holders of referrer, practitioner and operator. The coding taxonomy has been expanded to include the modalities of MRI and molecular radiotherapy and the associated guidance further developed to explain how to classify incidents and near miss events.

In order to minimise the burden on clinical departments, MEG plans to extract relevant incident data from existing systems such as National Reporting and Learning System (NRLS) and Learning From Patient Safety Events (LFPSE) and newly developed systems such as Once for Wales. Individual departments in Northern Ireland, Scotland and the Independent Sector will also have the opportunity to submit data directly to UKHSA. Providers will need to add the relevant incident codes to their local incident management system, for example Datix, prior to submission to UKHSA.

The submitted incident data will be analysed by MEG. Results and learning will be published in regular reports on the gov.uk website. This will provide opportunities for clinical departments to learn from a greater pool of data, supporting a reduction in the magnitude and probability of incidents. As the system becomes established and more departments contribute data, this will allow local comparison of local incidents with the national picture. Sharing learning from clinical imaging incident data at a local, national and international level is essential to maximise opportunities to improve patient safety.