Lorenzo live at Morecambe Bay by end of month

15 Sep 2008

Computer Science Corporation’s chief technology officer for the National Programme for IT in the NHS has said it will implement Lorenzo at the first acute trust by the end of September.

Speaking at an industry event in St Albans last week, Mike Dyer said University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust will go live “by the end of the month.” South Birmingham Primary Care Trust became the first to go live with a version of iSoft’s flagship software at the end of August.

Speaking of delays to the Lorenzo product Dyer said: “Four years ago we wrote a contract that said we would deliver in four months; that didn’t happen. So we said we’d take and put in some legacy systems produced by iSoft.”

CSC is the local service provider for three out of five of NPfIT’s regions. Describing the situation when the original LSP contracts were signed, Dyer said: “At the time they said they’d have their flagship product delivered in six months. It simply wasn’t delivered on time.”

However, he said that his experience of 30 years with CSC, working on more than 100 projects, showed that delays to software were an unfortunate fact of life. “That’s the nature of so software delivery.”

Dyer said that he was brought in 18-months ago, from his “day job” heading CSC’s engineering group, to “break the log-jam” in software development delays. He described the situation he faced as the most challenging environment he’d ever worked in.

“We had the right to step in and take over management of [the Lorenzo] development. We elected to use that right, but it was incredibly difficult as it was at that time that the company [iSoft] was being sold.”

Having the exercised the step-in right on development of Lorenzo, CSC decided the project was worth sticking with. “We looked at the software and said this is worth saving. The most important thing to us is getting it to market.”

But completing Lorenzo meant taking a razor to chunks of the product iSoft had been developing in Chennai. “We found that it had plans to build an integration engine. This is something we put a stop to.”

In the absence of Lorenzo, CSC had to focus on installing iSoft legacy products, even though these weren’t integrated. Speaking on the day that CSC announced it has appointed InterSystems to provide the trust integration engine, Dyer said: “We put things in quickly and as a result they weren’t integrated, and a variety of integration engines were used. But there comes a point where you have to stop, take stock and do it right.”

Outlining CSC’s central objectives on the national programme and how the Lorenzo product is planned to be delivered, Dyer said: “It’s a flagship approach based on a single electronic patient record with satellite applications, being synchronised by an IT engine.”

Dyer said that as CTO of CSC’s NHS team the maxims he sought to apply were simple. “Scalability, reliability and consistency are the three most important things that matter to me from the CTO level.”

He said the last seven months have been spent performance tuning Lorenzo, and a similar amount of time ensuring the scalability. “You build for scalability and tune for performance.”

Link

IBA Health outlines international plans for Lorenzo Studio

Jon Hoeksma

Reader's Comments

Step up the real Lorenzo!

15 Sep 08 16:36

We now seem to have two or more fundamentally different products called Lorenzo: can anyone tell me which is the one contracted for by CfH? CSC seem to have taken over Lorenzo - and "put a stop" to the plans to develop an integration agent - but Lorenzo Studio (an integration agent) is being launched independently, and CSC has decided to use Intersystems as the trust integration agency. Where does Lorenzo Regional Care (apparently the detailed shared record solution) fit? is it IBA or CSC, and how will it be made interoperable with the rest of England?

In addition, when the LSP contracts were signed, 'Dyer said: “At the time they said they’d have their flagship product delivered in six months. It simply wasn’t delivered on time.”' Well, yes, and software delays are to be expected - but did CSC really believe that the software was sufficiently advanced to be capable of being delivered in six months - or even 18 months - seeing it would have to be written from the beginning? Or were smoke and mirrors knowingly involved from the outset?

I'm confused too!

18 Sep 08 21:00

What on earth is going on with Lorenzo? This was supposed to be one system and IBA/iSoft were not so long ago stating that it would be launched internationally.

Now Gary Cohen is stating that the full integrated system will be a long way off. Mmm - that sounds promising. So they go for this plug and play type of solution "Lorenzo Studio". And that is different to other suppliers who have been promoting similar systems, how?

Interestingly enough I spoke with someone from a large acute hospital in Singapore recently, who had Lorenzo demo'd. They did not pursue it as it did not meet their needs or was advanced enough clinically. I think they were also originally an iCM site who decided to go back to pre-iCM and go direct to the new Sunrise Eclipsys system from Eclipsys themselves.

Funny how things go full circle.

Best of breed, worst of breed

19 Sep 08 11:30

It seems from what I have seen that Cerner provides a loosly associated set of systems (different look and feel, and challenges of passing data between them), and that even the IBA Lorenzo vision outlined here is of a flagship with sattelite applications synchronised by an integration engine.

This is more and more like the strategies we were all adopting before central interference. Except that rather than NHS organisations being free to select the best products (and encourage the various players to work hard to make their systems shine and leapfrog each other), there will be a choice of one, by the monopoly supplier, with any enhancements taking forever to get, and all costs passed straight back at monopoly pricing.

Flagship delivered in 6 months, pirate ship in 4 years more like.

Reality Check Please

22 Sep 08 13:10

Lets have a reality check here. The reason the previous strategy failed was that the NHS couldn't afford it. For each Trust / Health Community to find circa £10million over 2 or 3 years was the road to rack and ruin. The only way this could be delivered if the Software and Service Charge was Free* to the Trusts. It was not a utopia where we came from, so please take off the rose tinted glasses. Also, please be sensible, Lorenzo is going to replace MOST of the healthcare systems, but not all - it never was going to be a path lab system or a radiology system. Most NHS organisations do not even have electronic ordering systems as the costs have not been outweighed by the advantages to date. Enough of the fake outrage.

Reality Cheque !!

23 Sep 08 10:21

Replace 'MOST' systems with what ? I think recent articles have made it pretty clear that 'Lorenzo' is actually what everybody suspected an integration engine and IPM and ICM and other 'legacy' systems are the nuts and bolts being offered. Sorry about the spelling mistake in the summary but it seems to most that the reality of what is going on is much more to do with how much of the NPFIT/CFH pot some of these companies can get their hands on rather rather than the benefits to patient care.

Reality Check Cheque !

23 Sep 08 21:52

I mean replace with Lorenzo. Lorenzo is a product in its own right. Release 2 will replace iPM / iCM and add on a load of extra features. It is a real system (Browser based)- not an integration between iPM / iCM etc.... My Trust uses iPM and iCM now and we will switch off iCM in about 9 months time and then switch off iPM in about 18 months time. After that we will be using a single system for all users. We can then begin to switch off some of the smaller departmentals like Diabetes systems etc... and re-provide this in Lorenzo. In X years time, our systems base will be 5 or 6 systems such as Lorenzo,RIS/PACS,Pharmacy and Pathology. Not the 30 or so systems we have now - some interfaced, some not...Assuming the quality of Lorenzo is there then this will work, if not then we remain on 30 systems...