North Staffs announces 'big bang' implementation

Tags: A EPR iCM iCM Information iS iSoft Lorenzo NPfIT Order communications PAS PAS Quality

10 Jul 2006

University Hospital of North Staffordshire NHS Trust has started its trust-wide ‘big bang’ implementation of a new iSoft patient administration system, together with specialist clinical systems as part of its move towards an electronic patient record.

Several of the trust's legacy systems, many of which were bespoke, have now been replaced in PAS A&E, theatre, maternity, clinical coding, data warehousing and results reporting. Yet to be implemented is order communications and prescribing.

The project which has occurred outside the NHS National Programme for IT was originally signed between the trust and iSoft in 2003 and was originally due to have gone live in March, 2004.

The new systems will form part of the trust's EPR system. Although outside the NPfIT contract, many of the systems being implemented at the trust are also due to be implemented at other sites in the North West and West Midlands cluster of the NPfIT by local NHS IT prime contracts Computer Services Corporation (CSC).

Jeff Harnet, EPR programme manager at the hospital, said: "What we have achieved is directly in line with the goals of the national programme to modernise information tools available to healthcare professionals. Making full use of information systems is crucial to improving access to, and the quality of, healthcare services for clinical staff and patients alike."

The original target date has been moved back a number of times during the project, from May 2004 to July then December 2005. A full EPR will be installed in the trust over subsequent phases, as well as PACS.

Harnett told E-Health Insider in May that while the systems implemented were not the long-awaited Lorenzo PAS, they were getting "a lot more functionality than just iCM and iPM", iSOFT's existing PAS and clinical systems.

In May the trust and iSoft said in a joint statement that there had been a number of reasons for the delays: "Data migration on this scale and complexity is something that is outside the scope of many NPfIT projects. iSoft is transferring ten years' worth of clinical data from multiple, disparate sources."

Readers Comments

Fingers Crossed

10 Jul 06 14:29

Praise must go to North Staffs for implementing an extremely challenging programme of IT systems. These systems will no doubt have been implemented in conjunction with changes to existing working practices and processes to make the organisation more effective and efficient whilst releasing significant benefits .

However, I would suspect that there will be some anxiety at North Staffs with the financial uncertainties surrounding iSoft. I assume all the products implemented were iSofts??

Well done! - It's not said often enough

10 Jul 06 18:17

I would just like to extend my congratulations to the North Staffs trust for their sucessful implementation of such a large system in a "Big Bang" approach.

Having been through two of these personally as a front line member of the IT support team for both implementations, I know that they are not easy.

Congratulations! I just hope that people in your trust appreciate the effort that you must all have put in to make it successful.

Keeping useful data

11 Jul 06 16:21

"Data migration on this scale and complexity is something that is outside the scope of many NPfIT projects. iSoft is transferring ten years' worth of clinical data from multiple, disparate sources."

Doubtless not all of it containing NHS Number, but clinically useful none the less. It is often outside scope for NPfIT because the centre and LSP have made it difficult, not because Trusts don't value the data, or the clinical software suppliers could not handle it.

Good for North Staffs clinicians, shame for the rest of us.

Data migration?

12 Jul 06 21:42

My understanding is that under the NPfIT contract deciding what data will be extracted for migration is a purely local decision and responsibility.

Someone please correct me, if I am wrong!

Migration

14 Jul 06 09:20

Congratulations to North Staffs

The amount of history taken is a local decision made by individual Trusts (at least in this cluster). Trusts that decide against taking historical data, do none the less make that data available to be read - data is not lost!

It would be interesting to compare Noth Staffs experience of dealing directly with iSoft rather than having to go through an LSP. I suspect that its a lot easier talking to the supplier directly.

Data migration?

14 Jul 06 09:56

You are partially right in saying that the data extraced for migration, under the NPfIT contract, is a local decision.

However, this comes with the proviso around the quality of the data held within that record. In order to assure this, the Trusts must achieve 95% NHS number coverage of the data migrated for active patients, and 100% of inactive records are to have an NHS number.

Providing this can be achieved, then the Trusts can migrate as much data as they so wish.