Bradshaw promises Lorenzo and Millennium by summer

01 Apr 2008

Health minister Ben Bradshaw has said despite ongoing delays new Lorenzo and Millennium software will be delivered to NHS sites this summer.

Replying to a parliamentary question the minister also confirmed last week that development work on Cerner Millennium for the South of England had ceased while the NHS remains in a deadlocked contract dispute with Fujitsu and Cerner.

The minister also addressed concerns about the financial stability of iSoft’s parent company, IBA Health, saying this had been verified by iSoft’s prime contractor on the NHS IT programme Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC).

O’Brien asked for the minister’s assessment of the progress of the development and implementation of the delayed Lorenzo and Millennium clinical systems. The health minister said regular reviews were being conducted and promised new systems by the summer.

Bradshaw said the development of Lorenzo Release 1 “has been regularly assessed by NHS Connecting for Health”.

Responsibility for delivering Lorenzo to the NHS rests with Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), the software is being developed by iSoft. Delivery of Lorenzo was first promised to the NHS at the end of 2004.

Commenting on when Lorenzo will finally be deployed to NHS sites, Bradshaw said: “It is understood that the development plans will enable the deployment of Release 1of Lorenzo into early adopter sites in the North, Midlands and East Programme for information technology, formerly North West and West Midlands, North East and the East Midlands, in the summer.”

Bradshaw added: “Release 2 of Lorenzo is due to be ready for deployment in the autumn”.

On the development of Millennium software by Cerner, to be delivered in the South by Fujitsu, Bradshaw said eight hospitals were currently using the software, but confirmed further development and deployments remain on hold until deadlocked contract negotiations are resolved.

“The development of the Cerner Millennium by Fujitsu in the South of England, where eight hospitals are using the Release 0 version of the software is the subject of a current contract reset.”

The minister said BT has delivered Millennium software to two London hospitals since last summer “and a further deployment is now due”. He said the next Release LC1 “is due to be implemented in the summer”.

All the LSPs confirmed to EHI that the minister’s answers were factually correct.

Though trusts are now responsible for deployment plans under the National Programme for IT Local Ownership Programme (NLOP), NHS Connecting for Health (CfH) are responsible for reviewing and assessing the delivery of systems by LSPs.

The minister added: “It is the responsibility of the local service providers to manage the delivery of the NHS Care Record Service to the contracted timetables and for the management of their sub-contractors and suppliers.

“NHS Connecting for Health routinely assesses progress against plans and manages the relationship and commercial arrangements with suppliers to ensure that NHS requirements are being met.”

Also monitored by CfH regularly was the financial stability of system suppliers, he added.

Asked by O’Brien if iSoft’s parent company IBA Healthcare was financially stable, Bradshaw answered: “Computer Science Corporation as the relevant LSP, has confirmed the financial stability of IBA Healthcare as their sub-contractor and that the purchase of iSoft by IBA has not adversely impacted on the delivery timescales for the Lorenzo solution to the NHS.”

Bradshaw’s promises on the Lorenzo system echo those of Connecting for Health’s head of service implementation, Richard Jeavons, as reported by E-Health Insider last month. Talk of June and July Lorenzo delivery has now been replaced by reference to the summer.

Link

CfH director says Lornzo will arrive in summer

Reader's Comments

Summer?

01 Apr 08 08:58

I expect we'll be having an Indian Summer this year.

Really???

01 Apr 08 09:28

April Fool!!!

Increasingly desperately - What is Lorenzo - and Millenium?

maryhawking@tigers.demon.co.uk

01 Apr 08 10:35

"Health minister Ben Bradshaw has said despite ongoing delays new Lorenzo and Millennium software will be delivered to NHS sites this summer." Ben Bradshaw would appear to be talking about Lorenzo and Millennium as Hospital PAS/EPR systems - and yet Lorenzo (I don't know about Millennium) is supposed to be a Detailed Care Record as well. What is Ben Bradshaw saying will be delivered in the summer? Secondary care PAS/EPRs or comprehensive SSEPRs (Single Shared Electronic Patient Records)? The two are not the same - and there are huge problems with the SSEPR approach. It really would be helpful to know what the minister thinks will be delivered - and what is actually planned. "it seems to me the elephant is like a piece of string"

April fools

01 Apr 08 11:55

This really ought to be an April fools - its up there with spaghetti trees.

Don't the ministers ever question the guidance their civil servants are giving them on this project? Bradshaw is surely only giving the responses he's being told by the DH.

Hello World

01 Apr 08 12:08

Now is the summer of our discontent

01 Apr 08 17:11

The minister didn't say which summer did he ?

Mary, the idea of locally joined up records across healthcare settings was long ago abandoned. This was replaced with rather pointless sharing in one care setting across huge geography, which IG concerns have now blocked. So even adjacent hospitals will now have more difficulty sharing information about patients they share, where paper and local electronic records previously flowed to aid patient safety.

And GPs led the revolt.

Was it arrogance from the LSPs that their systems would be better than anything before, ignorance from CfH about how far short what they were buying fell of user needs and expectations, or denial from the NHS that this remote, rushed and bungled process would ever come to mean anything in their working lifetime ?

Correction

jon@e-health-media.com

02 Apr 08 19:19

Due to an editing error EHI misquoted Ben Bradshaw as stating Lorenzo Release 2 is due to be ready in the summer. It has been pointed out to us that the minsiter actually said Release 2 is due to be ready in the autumn.

Jon Hoeksma Editor EHI

further correction

03 Apr 08 11:56

Jon

due to another editting error, you appear to have ommitted summer of which year these fabled products are to be made available. 2009? 2014?

Re:Now is the summer of our discontent

maryhawking@tigers.demon.co.uk

03 Apr 08 21:17

I'm not sure whether you applaud or blame GPs for "leading the revolt"! I have no problems with systems for sharing relevant information to improve patient care with individual patient consent: after all, that is what we do now with referrals etc. and the patients approve and expect this. I do have doubts about the structure and governance of the SSEPR (single shared electronic patient record) - and also to the mechanisms for patient consent to this degree of "sharing" and mechanisms for enabling this without potentially damaging patient care. I appreciate the political and contractual drivers - but shouldn't patients be consulted and the risks addressed before - rather than after - the systems are rolled out?

Blame - moi ?

11 Apr 08 13:24

Do I blame GPs for leading the revolt ? I fear they may have been more motivated to act from self interest, and fear of change, than truly in the best interests of patients. But also, I respect that they have working, refined, clinically relevant and usable systems, in contrast to what NPfIT has given us.

For elective care, as you state, there has always been a consent implied or assumed when a referral is made - content of the letter, and implications of sharing not necessarily made explicit.

For emergency care, the unpredictability of the access points, and 24x7 availability make it difficult to argue that breaking the "single shared record" model was the way to go. Integrating a heterogeneous estate was always going to be more difficult.

Back in 2002, near the birth of the nightmare, I spent 5 long days at a hotel near Heathrow, evaluating the 10 bidders for NCRS. The Americans could not comprehend that we had separate records in hospitals and primary care settings. I came away believing none of them could do the job, but they sold the vision to NPfIT anyhow.

Through attrition, and sloppy CfH use of language, the Detailed Care Record has become partitioned, and the most important cross-sector linkages all but lost.

Endless debating about perfection rather than implementing pilots, learning, sharing and refining is why there is so little implemented. And I think that is largely down to the programme structure and management.

Have critics like you and I, and GPs in general saved or scuppered progress and the promised opportunities ? Time may tell, but it appears that the madness continues oblivious.

Lorenzo Releases 1 and 2

13 Apr 08 11:49

Three early adopters are currently planning their implementation of the iSoft Lorenzo solution supplied by CSC. Implementing the first release of the four stage release plan, the solution will offer clinicians significant functionality.

The first two product releases include:

RELEASE 1: [available to early adopters in June 2008, and to all other NHS trusts from late summer 2008]

Release 1 will be deployed over of legacy Patient Administration Systems (PAS) applications, and include:

- ‘order entry’ and ‘results reporting’ for pathology and radiology tests which are supported through interfaces to legacy departmental systems;

- ‘order entry’ and ‘results reporting ‘ functionality that can be used to support ordering of a range of other patient-based services such as Allied Health Professionals (AHPs) (e.g. physiotherapy and occupational therapy) and nursing interventions;

- the ability to build a wide range of clinical documentation which will either begin to replace the paper based record or will begin to replace the multiple clinical applications which are currently used throughout the NHS.

RELEASE 2: [available to early adopters at end 2008 and all other NHS trusts from early spring 2009]

Replaces legacy PAS systems currently operated across the NHS, operating both within and across NHS organisations. This functionality includes:

- referral management:

- access planning and waiting lists;

- outpatient, inpatient, day care, caseload management;

- care planning;

- case note tracking;

- contract management functionality.

For those trusts that need to record mental health administration act details and undertake mental health reviews and tribunals a module is available to do this.

This release also includes the ability to record ‘To Take Out’ (TTO) drugs using a formulary-based catalogue which provides drug-drug and other checking functionality to reduce clinical errors.

In addition, emergency care functionality is supported for those organisations looking to replace their current departmental systems.