Bury is Lorenzo’s November milestone

Tags: A Acute Bury CSC iS Lorenzo NHS Bury NPfIT

18 Aug 2009

NHS Bury is “on-track” to deploy Lorenzo Regional Care (Release 1.9) by November 2009; the deadline set for a further deployment of the system by director general of health informatics Christine Connelly.

At Healthcare Computing 2009, Connelly said the iSoft electronic patient record system for the North, Midlands and East must be “implemented in any care-setting by November” and “running smoothly” across one acute trust by March next year.

In May, E-Health Insider learned that Kettering General Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Derbyshire Mental Health Services NHS Trust and NHS Bury had all agreed to become additional early adopters.

Earlier this month, it emerged that the Derbyshire trust had instead decided on a hardware upgrade to support its existing iSoft patient administration system. But it remained unclear which of the other trusts was looking to meet the November deadline.

In a statement, Stephen Mills, chief executive of NHS Bury, said: “We are continuing to prepare for the deployment of Lorenzo Regional Care by November and the project at Bury is on track.

“We are doing this with the support of NHS North West, NHS Connecting for Health and CSC Alliance. In accordance with local plans, the implementation of Lorenzo at this stage will not include neighbouring NHS organisations.”

Last week, Michael Mancuso, vice president of local service provider CSC, told analysts on a call about CSC’s earnings that it was now focused on Bury and that it was key to further payments from the National Programme for IT in the NHS.

“The key trust is Bury; that’s where the first adopter site has been selected of the go forward on the November milestone,” he said.

“As we’ve always said, we get milestone payments. That milestone is a significant milestone and we need to achieve that milestone to get our full anticipated payments from the NHS.”

During the call, Mancuso also responded to the news that Derbyshire had decided against its implementation of Lorenzo, which EHI exclusively revealed.

Although the trust confirmed that it would not be implementing Lorenzo until at least 2012-13, Mancuso said: “Derbyshire from our people’s perspective is not an issue.

“Derbyshire is committed to Lorenzo but pushed it out a bit. It wasn’t planned for this quarter and it’s a small trust with no impact on milestones.”

Link: CSC

Sarah Bruce

Derbyshire scraps Lorenzo plans (06 Aug 2009) (14)
Morecambe Bay completes Furness pilot (24 Jun 2009) (5)
Connelly sets a November deadline for suppliers (28 Apr 2009) (12)

Readers Comments

A great challenge ahead

18 Aug 09 06:33

Its indeed a great news for all those who have been waiting to see R1.9 getting deployed in a much bigger setting. Having said that, there is a great challenge ahead in actually getting it deployed and making it work as expected. Cheers for all those working towards it to make it a reality.

why has Lonenzo progress gone quiet

18 Aug 09 07:36

Is it just because we are in August, or has everyone suddenly gone quiet on the Lorenzo programme.

What does this mean?

18 Aug 09 10:10

Does this statement about Bury PCT mean that ALL their current In-Practice Vision GP users will move over to Lorenzo RC in November?

Or does it mean something else - maybe just one GP practice?

Does anyone really know or is it top secret?

I bet the Tory party are wishing for this to fail

18 Aug 09 11:02

I know we don't really know what this means, but if Kingston goes well, that will be one Cerner as well.

How then will Dave justify scrapping the NHS big computer thingy!

I think I have the answer...

18 Aug 09 11:41

I think Lorenzo RC is designed to provide clinicians with a "Clinical Summary View" which draws information from the various health and social care information systems currently in use in a local health economy. Something like a detailed summary care record (yes I know - oxymoron).

I think that the plan is that, over time, more and more clinical information will be input directly into Lorenzo RC as it's functionality increases.

It might just work, but keeping all the information from "feeder systems" up to date and accurate will be a daunting and high risk process.

Good luck to Bury PCT...

Toys out the pram?

18 Aug 09 13:33

CSCs Vice President sounds very much like he is throwing his toys out of his pram at Derbyshires decision to not move forward with Lorenzo by almost saying he didn't ever care whether they went live or not - that's a good message from an LSP isn't it?!

I will wait with much anticipation on Bury's November deadline; remember, Christine Connelly stated that Lorenzo must be “implemented in any care-setting by November” and “running smoothly” - a challenge indeed!

More information needed

18 Aug 09 14:45

I would like to know 2 things:

1. What is the contractual definition of being "implimented"... 1 user on 1 PC ?

2. "running smoothly"... again a definition is needed as my limited experience with lorenzo so far has been anything but smooth.

Then we will see exactly what we are getting for our money.

Smoke and mirrors?

18 Aug 09 15:58

Can someone please confirm that we are talking about Bury >Primary Care Trust< here - so this implementation might involve neither GP surgery or hospital systems. Indeed it might not involve direct clinical care at all. That would certainly help to ensure the implementation is smooth.

Well I never

18 Aug 09 22:21

Who'd have ever thought they'd see Bury and Lorenzo mentioned in the same sentence. Nice!

Some you folks on here taking it all toooo seriously. This is a £12Bn joke. You might as well get your money's worth out of it.

I think it's full deployment!

19 Aug 09 16:58

I reckon it's replacing their iPM Lorenzo which is utilised by about 25 community health services. It so then this is a big bang 1.9 deployment ladies and gentlemen.

When I worked there they had about 450-500 staff so it's potentially massive...I know services are taking clinical docs too.

Re: I think it's full deployment!

20 Aug 09 10:54

Let's hope you're right.

However, history suggests that - in the NPfIT arena - potentially massive big bangs all-too-often turn out to be damp squibs.

Surely someone knows if its going to be ready in November?

maryhawking@tigers.demon.co.uk

22 Aug 09 14:35

If everything will be running smoothly by November 2009, surely there must be some firm information in the public domain?

Good Point Mary

24 Aug 09 17:12

When is the proposed go live date for the implementation/upgrade at Bury?

Assuming passing milestones, and having a system working smoothly, means that the system will have had to have at least passed the post-implementation sign-off stage, which requires a length of time of proven 'smooth running' before CSC get their payment.

If this is the case, then surely given that we are nearly at the end of August, go live can't be far off.

And, if that is so, you would like to think that the 400-500 staff alledgedly using this system would have at least commenced training by now, and if that therefore, it would be on the release that's going live, so we could expect some feedback on useability, functionality to be in the public domain now. Couldn't we...?

LE 2.2 to LRC 1.9

26 Aug 09 11:11

I work for a neighbouring Trust, who like the Majority of organisations in Greater Mancehster all currently share the same instance of iSoft IPM version LE 2.2.

As far as I understand Bury are doing a big bang from LE 2.2 to LRC 1.9 for the whole of the PCT, i.e. some 4/500 users. I have been told that there are currently a dozen or so programmers over from Chennai(Madras) at great expense (to CSC / iSoft) to facilitate the move, as stated in the article it is crital to some stage payments for the contact to have this site up and smoothly running in November hence the extra manpower.

It will be interesting to see if they meet the deadline as a lot of other organisations (PCT's, Acute Trusts etc using IPM) in Greater Manchester are watching what happens before finalising their upgrade plans (from LE2.2 to LRC1.9 / 2) - is it actually an upgrade or just a migration?