CfH director says Lorenzo will arrive in summer

18 Mar 2008

Richard Jeavons, CfH’s head of service implementation

Connecting for Health’s head of service implementation has said he is confident the next generation Lorenzo software from iSoft will be ready for delivery to the first NHS sites within the ‘period’ of the summer.

Speaking at a Department of Health press conference last week Richard Jeavons, CfH’s head of service implementation, indicated the agency would persist with the Lorenzo software to provide detailed care records (CRS), even if delays to its delivery continue.

Lorenzo, with new integrated detailed CRS software being developed by iSoft, is meant to be delivered by Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) to NHS trusts across the north of England under the £12.4bn NHS IT programme. Originally due at the end of 2004, the Lorenzo software is over three years late.

Jeavons said that while delivery had occurred in many areas, the NHS IT programme was still having difficulty delivering systems into hospitals. “The really tricky area is the putting of systems into hospitals. Anyone who knows about this programme knows that.”

He added: “We all know the challenge is in CRS deployment out through LSPs, and the challenges are with suppliers and NHS organisations.”

The CfH director acknowledged there had been repeated delays in the delivery of detailed CRS by the local service providers (LSPs). “Yes, there have been delays. We have been completely open about that,” Jeavons told E-Health Insider. He said he was confident of the first delivery of Lorenzo occurring by this summer, or thereabouts.

Pushed on the question of whether he believed there would not be any further delays to Lorenzo Jeavons said. “Experience is always the best predictor. We’ve put a lot of time in the development programme in the past 12-months. We are optimistic we will see delivery, and subsequent ones, in that period.”

Asked whether a detailed CRS had been delivered anywhere in England to date, Jeavons said CfH had delivered many systems providing elements of the functionality that will be contained in the detailed CRS, but acknowledged “there is no Lorenzo yet”.

When asked whether further delays to Lorenzo might ever lead to a point where CfH pulled the plug on the product and seek an alternative, Jeavons said: “I doubt it.”

CfH’s head of service implementation added: “There is good support for the programme but frustration in getting there.”

He added that other parts of the programme had been successfully delivered, added in or even delivered ahead of time. Examples include the N3 network, picture archiving and communications systems and GP-to-GP record transfers.

With the programme almost 50% under spent against where it planned to be – just £1.3bn of the forecast £2.8bn had been paid by last March - the CfH director of service implementation said the shortfall came from slow LSP delivery of the detailed CRS systems from iSoft and Cerner.

Responding to questions Jeavons said the LSP contract resets were still underway “The Fujitsu contract reset is still in progress. The CSC [Computer Sciences Corporation] reset is still in progress.” He added that the BT contract reset is “still ongoing but near completion”.

He explained the contract resets were being carried out to re-align priorities with changed policy objectives.

Jeavons stressed CfH wanted to accelerate progress, adding “that’s the sort of thing we will be looking at in the [Swindells] Informatics review.”

Link

Plans for limited Lorenzo delivery slip

Reader's Comments

Will Lorenzo destroy GP records?

maryhawking@tigers.demon.co.uk

20 Mar 08 09:19

CfH is sticking by the contracts awarded to Accenture and CSC to provide Detailed Care Records which I understand to be single electronic records for patients in a local area, including all the organisations caring for that patient - in hospital, outpatients, community - and general practice. In the only partial system functioning - CSC/TPP SystmOne, which is for primary care e.g. GP plus Community - only the organisation making the entry can remove it: there are already examples where the GP view shows diabetes or multiple sclerosis falsely - but as the entries had been made by foot services and physiotherapy, the record could not be corrected by the GP. Is Lorenzo going to subsume the GP record - and when will any information on the clinical governance of the record in Lorenzo be made available? GP electronic records have been hugely successful - but are highly structured and a different beast from the episode based narrative records needed for both hospital and community care: it would be a shame to loose them because of Lorenzo!

Will Lorenzo destroy GP records?

21 Mar 08 17:15

Are they GP records or patient records?

Teflon husky?

26 Mar 08 09:30

It perhaps signals a change of culture that prominent CfH representatives can now make public pledges of fealty to a supplier

Lest we forget - compare Richard Jeavons' comments to "Managing the NHS IT suppliers is like running a team of huskies. When one of the dogs goes lame, it is shot. It is then chopped up and fed to the other dogs." [Richard Granger]

How else to explain Jeavons' rather puzzling statement "the agency would persist with the Lorenzo software to provide detailed care records (CRS), even if delays to its delivery continue"?

I am reminded irresistibly of the World of football - and the Chairman of a club offering full and unequivocal support for a manager.

So Soon!

27 Mar 08 15:39

The marketing slides for Lorenzo are excellent! However we seem to be some 5 years late in seeing a beta site version. I am pleased that there is confidence in Lorenzo's arrival.