Cohen: 25 trusts to get Lorenzo in 2010

Tags: A Cohen Connelly iS iSoft NPfIT

10 Nov 2009

The head of ISoft has said 25 NHS trusts will go live with the company's 'strategic' electronic patient record, Lorenzo, next year.

Speaking via a telephone link to E-Health Insider Live ’09, iSoft executive chairman and chief executive Gary Cohen said he was confident that Lorenzo Regional Care (Release 1.9) would go live across University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust by next March.

This spring, director general of informatics Christine Connelly said she wanted to see Lorenzo “working smoothly” across an acute trust by March, having gone live in another setting by the end of November.

NHS Bury met the November deadline, and Cohen said he was sure Morecambe Bay would be ready on time.

He said staff from the trust, the company and local service provider CSC were about to go out to iSoft’s development centre in Chennai to see and run tests on the product.

“More than 25 trusts will be scheduled to go live with Lorenzo Regional Care in 2010,” he added.

Cohen featured in a video presentation about Lorenzo, in which he ran through its architecture and some of the releases planned for the NHS.

He said Release 2 – or ‘clinicals’ – had been released to CSC and that Release 3 would be released to the LSP next year.

He said that customers would be able to use Lorenzo Studio to develop their own applications and adaptations.

And he announced that Lorenzo Primary Care would be launched next year, for sale direct to the NHS. CSC is due to take a version of Lorenzo for primary care in its areas at Release 4.

In response to a question from session chair and E-Health Insider editor Jon Hoeksma about what made Lorenzo “sizzle”, Cohen said it was its web-based, distributed architecture on which customers could add the functionality they needed.

He claimed the hosted nature of Lorenzo made it suitable for smaller organisations who could not build or maintain their own IT infrastructures, and that it would save larger organisations “millions and millions of pounds.”

“Some features others will copy, and on some features Lorenzo will catch up,” he said. “But the technology is where we stand apart from the competition and what is available in the rest of the world.”

Lyn Whitfield

Connelly sets benchmark for November (04 Nov 2009) (14)
Bury goes live with first Lorenzo PAS (03 Nov 2009) (20)
Lorenzo has just 174 'regular users' (02 Nov 2009) (13)
Lorenzo R1.9 to debut at EHI event (20 Oct 2009) (5)
Morecambe Bay completes Furness pilot (24 Jun 2009) (5)

Readers Comments

Three questions

10 Nov 09 16:36

>>“More than 25 trusts will be scheduled to go live with Lorenzo Regional Care in 2010,”<<

If 25 trusts were to go-live in 2010 would we/they not already know about it?
Does "scheduled" mean the hospitals will go-live in 2010 or merely that during 2010 they will schedule a go-live sometime thereafter?
Isn't it up to CfH and/or CSC and/or Trusts to announce schedules, not iSoft?

Visual cues ....

10 Nov 09 19:24

I suppose as it was by telephone link no-one could see whether Mr Cohen had his fingers crossed behind his back?

It scares me

11 Nov 09 09:29

Sometimes I wonder if Gary believes what he is saying or realises it's just sales splurge

part response to q1

lyn@e-health-media.com

11 Nov 09 09:59

In response to a question at E-Health Insider Live '09, Cohen was even more definite in saying "we are going to deploy another 25 trusts in 2010." Lyn Whitfield.

is it iSoft v CSC?

11 Nov 09 13:33

Remember that iSoft seem to deploy Lorenzo independently of CSC, so the score may well be iSoft 25 - CSC 5.

Do you remember 2003

pocorio@yahoo.com

11 Nov 09 13:47

If only pigs could fly. In the summerl of 2003 (can you remember that far back) Granger proudly stated that the LSP contracts contained very severe penalities for late delivery. CSC'c deliver of Lorenzo hasn't been late, it has been nonexistent. Presumably by this time CSC is paying the Department of Health for the privilige of delivering Lorenzo. What do you think?

25 Trusts seems overly optermistic?

jk.ehi@knightnet.org.uk

11 Nov 09 14:23

If 25 Trusts are to go live next year they most certainly WILL know about it and should already be planning for training and deployment.

Of course, there are already a lots of trusts that are "ready to go" because all of the "fast follower" Trusts were due to start deployment this Autumn. I know of at least one Trust that had 5 trainers ready in the Spring & were still believing even as late as May that they would go live in October despite them having no real evidence nor was 1st of type completed then of course, nor had their trainers even had their training scheduled.

So there are probably lots of Trusts who believe they really will go live next year. For Community care, this is perhaps slightly less of a problem as they are likely to only use the booking and diary management services initially and no doubt that will be considered to be "live". But even limited deployments into Secondary care are enormous undertakings and I really don't know where they will get deployment or training staff from if a significant number are scheduled in for next year.

If your Trust is "offered" a slot, I would strongly suggest sitting down with CFH, the supplier AND the other deploying Trusts to come up with a realistic understanding of what resources are actually available across the UK and to plan for schedule slippages.

Regards, Julian Knight

http://it.knightnet.org.uk