IBA tells investors Lorenzo will launch in November

27 Aug 2008

In its first annual report since acquiring UK health software vendor iSoft, for £166m last August, IBA Health on Monday reported that revenues have almost quadrupled to £168m, up from £35m in 2007.

The Australian company said the first version of its long delayed Lorenzo strategic software will have a “global launch” this November. A more advanced version containing ‘clinicals’ is then promised to follow within three months.

Lorenzo is the key software the company is contracted to deliver to NHS organisations as part of the £12.6 billion NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT). Lorenzo, first promised by iSoft in late 2004, has yet to go live at any NHS trust.

In its annual report the company states: “The global launch for Lorenzo is planned for November 2008. The roll-out of Lorenzo for the UK NPfIT program is on track with the current agreed timetable.”

A bullish IBA told investors it also expects to win additional business from NHS customers in London and the South of England. Specifically, the roll-out of iSoft software to iSoft trusts in London and the South is described as a “precursor to overlaying the Lorenzo platform”.

In addition, the company says that a new contract, signed with CSC in March 08, “secures revenues and provides for additional services and revenue”.

The Sydney-based firm, which has delisted iSoft from the London Stock Exchange, reported that annual revenues have increased by 381% since buying iSoft, up to £168m. The figures up to the end of June show include eight months of iSoft revenues.

Since acquiring iSoft some 80% of IBA’s revenues now come from outside Australia and South East Asia, chiefly from the English NHS where iSoft is currently the largest single existing supplier of installed systems.

The annual report said that IBA had achieved increased revenue under the UK National Programme for IT, where it is a sub-contractor to Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), “through tight cost control and higher integration synergies than we originally indicated”. Cost savings synergies were reported at £12.6m.

IBA chairman Gary Cohen said 2008 has seen a “transformational change” in the IBA business. With the iSoft acquisition IBA had, he said “created a global health IT company”.

Cohen added: "We now have an international footprint of over 13,000 customers providing substantial recurring revenues and a base primed for the release of our next generation products.”

He made the following pledges for 2009: "FY09 will see the global launch of our unique next generation platform Lorenzo, delivering a transformational Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) based healthcare platform to our existing customers and driving future global growth opportunities.”

The IBA chairman said key relationships with UK NHS and the Irish Health Service Executive had “been enhanced at the strategic and operational levels and additional contracted revenues secured”.

The company also reported that “a strategic partnership model” had been established with CSC in relation to the NPfIT contract.

Jon Hoeskma

Reader's Comments

Software development lifecycle

28 Aug 08 14:44

"... A more advanced version containing ‘clinicals’ is then promised to follow within three months...."

I'll eat my hat if the full develpment lifecycle for the clinicals functionality has been followed here......especially since iSoft/CSC were still advertising (through agencies) for SME's for precisely this development up to a few weeks ago.

The timescales being quoted (in relation to the experts needed/ available) are just not realistic. Is propper testing (ie regresssion testing) being performed?

Still confused: is Lorenzo developed for needs of the NHS?

maryhawking@tigers.demon.co.uk

28 Aug 08 20:23

Very peculiar. I had thought Lorenzo was being developed for the NHS by iSoft under contract to Accenture and CSC and then CSC alone for the NHS. Now it seems it will be launched globally: did the NHS fund all of this? Lorenzo Regional Care is advertised as the solution for all primary and secondary care records. I cannot find any mention of the clinical governance of the record - and nothing to say whether this is to be the Detailed Care Record (itself poorly defined) to replace all other patient records, including GP EPRs (yes, even TPP SytmOne!) and if so, how this would work in the absence of a record monoculture.

It seems a shame that only GPs have an obligation to have good quality data in order to be authorised to continue holding records slsectronically....

Your confused, aren't we all

max.lock@live.co.uk

31 Aug 08 17:56

"Quadrupled to £168m, up from £35m in 2007."

Where did all this money come from and for doing what, surely not from Lorenzo as CFH only make payments for work completed, don't they? Lorenzo is still under development, (in India from what I have been told by iSoft staff) and it hasn't gone live anywhere in the UK yet.

(Post edited by EHI)

Lorenzo etc

01 Sep 08 11:40

Sorry for your confusion, but I beleive the previosu poster is labouring under a number of misaprehensions:

1) Lorenzo is a PAS/Acute Clinicals product. its isnt aimed at primary or community care

2) It is being developed by iSOFT for sale worldwide (and has been for an inordinately long time, well before CFH was ever heard of). It is in fact deployed in germany and HK now. It was bought by CFH through intermediaries for the NHS

3) Acute Trusts are under an obligation to keep good data. Its how we get paid

4) The DCR isnt a replacement for any clinical system, it is (as the name suggests) a more detailed abstract of clicnial data held elsewhere

Lorenzo Primary Care

01 Sep 08 15:42

As far as I'm aware, Lorenzo Primary Care is still being developed. Indeed Dr Peter Short (one of the two national clinical leads for CfH) and 11 other GPs went to Chennai to assist in the development of the Lorenzo GP application.

Lorenzo etc

01 Sep 08 21:14

".... It is being developed by iSOFT for sale worldwide ..."

iSOFT to the best of my knowledge have never written a single line of code themselves. I used to work for them - and everything they have has been aquired by acquistion.

LORENZO (not LZO or LE) is being developed (as iSOFTs first real development) from CfH provided functional specs - well they are being "interpreted" by iSOFT shall we say......and this is where EXPERIENCE comes into it - there isn't much of it anymore at iSOFT and IMO there are some fundermental flaws to be found in some areas of LORENZO. When these flaws have been brought up those in control simply shrugged their shoulders. Roll-on user acceptance testing.......

The Intelectual Property harvesting done some years back by iSOFT to generate a baseline functional spec from existing products has not been effectively utilised (and in some areas simply disregarded). Lessons learned and clinical safety features of 'older legacy systems' have not been taken on board.

Missing the Point

02 Sep 08 10:05

Are we all not missing the point here? Once again IBA/iSoft are promising a delivery date (again the magic three months off) which has no semblence of similarity to the date previously provided. What happened to June go live of Lorenzo release 1? What happened to 'some time in the summer'? What happened to Penfield? What is Lorenzo now? Who believes that Lorenzo is ever going to be delivered? It's four years - has the bleeding obvious not sunk in yet? IMHO November won't happen just like June didn't happen. When will this end? Just because the rhetoric has got more flowery doesn't give it any more credibility. When are we going to get someone brave enough to draw a line in the sand and stop this ridiculous and continuous back sliding? (Post edited by EHI)

Re: Missing the Point

max.lock@live.co.uk

03 Sep 08 07:17

Quite Right, 6+ years in development and 4 years late.

Software, originally designed years ago and probably without proper consultation from those who will be using it, no wonder it's late. iSoft have probably misinterpreted all kinds of functionality and probably missed the point entirely.

Luckily, its exactly what they wanted in Germany and HK, maybe it translates into a different language perfectly, or maybe its still in english, confusing them into thinking its what they want??

Keep up!

10 Sep 08 20:01

"Very peculiar. I had thought Lorenzo was being developed for the NHS by iSoft ... "

Yes it was but as Jon has reported at least twice CSC only has marketing rights in the UK - IBA inherited Worldwide rights when it bought out iSOFT.

As you will all have noticed on the iSOFT stand at HC2008, core Lorenzo EPR functionality has been available in Europe and Asia for some time. The key delay to NHS deployment was the government's pandering to the BMA and other IT security extremists and data protection fascists who have insisted that the LSPs (unlike GP system providers) needed to develop before system deployment massively complex and costly bells and whistles such as CAB compliance, PDS compliance, RA, RBAC, LRS, sealed envelopes and the like. Without these restrictions Lorenzo in the European form could have been deployed two years ago (as it was in Singapore).