Richard Granger, the director general of NHS IT, has
intervened to help rescue a delayed project which has become
critical to the success of the technology-led modernisation of
health services in London and Southern England.
The intervention came at the behest of Robert Naylor, chief
executive of one of the UK’s largest NHS trusts, University College
London Hospitals, who is heading a pathfinding implementation
project for the national programme for IT (NPfIT) in the NHS.
Timely delivery of the project - an advanced patient
administration system from US software supplier IDX - is critical
to UCLH’s plans to open a £422m hospital in London in May.
The project has also become critical to the national programme
because trusts across London and Southern England will receive the
IDX Carecast product after its anglicisation by IDX and UCLH.
But the system’s implementation in UCLH has been delayed four
times and, according to Naylor, is now more risky than originally
planned. IDX’s resources have been stretched and Granger has
intervened to concentrate the supplier’s focus on the project.
Under a contract signed between IDX and UCLH, the supplier was
due to install its proven Lastword system in July or August last
year - at least eight months before UCLH’s new hospital admits its
first patients.
Now the full roll-out is due to start on 4 April, about six
weeks before the 18-storey hospital in Euston Road opens its doors
to patients. The delays have been caused in part by the trust’s
decision to base its installation not
on Lastword but IDX’s newer Carecast product. April’s roll-out
within UCLH will be the first major Carecast implementation in
Europe.
In an interview with Computer Weekly, Naylor admitted that it
was risky to roll out key parts of UCLH’s £85m project for
electronic patient records only weeks before the disruption and
uncertainties associated with moving to a new hospital.
A major caseworking project at the Immigration and Nationality
Directorate failed in part because technical problems and delays
ran into the upheaval of an enforced office move.
UCLH last month went live with Carecast at the smallest of its
eight hospitals - the Hospital for Tropical Diseases - in what
Naylor called a low-risk, pilot implementation. The deployment only
involved about 20 users, but Naylor said it had been successful and
"quite a lot has been learned in the last few days".
A UCLH board paper in February said the trust is now "positioned
as a showcase for the potential benefits that the national
programme can deliver across the NHS".
The UCLH project’s critical role in the national programme is
ironic given that its contract with IDX falls outside the NPfIT.
Naylor and UCLH signed their contract with IDX in September 2003,
months before the NPfIT agreed separate deals for London and
Southern England based on IDX’s product.
"Essentially we have moved from a being a separate project
outside the national programme to being the pathfinder for the
national programme," said Naylor.
A paper to UCLH’s board last year revealed that Granger was
called on by Naylor to intervene after IDX’s resources became
stretched. In 10 months last year IDX UK’s staff grew from fewer
than 30 to more than 200 on the back of work for the national
programme. Counting US staff, IDX has more than 400 people working
on NHS projects.
"The impact of this growth did result in some lack of focus on
key deliverables for UCLH. Escalation via Robert Naylor to Richard
Granger has helped to relocate the UCLH project at the forefront of
the national programme for IT in London and the South, and has
resulted in a more concentrated effort from IDX," said the board
paper.
Asked whether IDX could cope with the huge workloads, Robert
Baker, managing director at IDX Systems UK, said, "Subsequent
to signing our contract with UCLH, we made the joint decision
with UCLH to implement IDX Carecast, our newest and most
sophisticated solution, which was then under development. In such a
development project, some delays are to be expected in return for
the benefits of a new solution.
"We are very pleased that UCLH is now live and functioning well
on Carecast in pilot mode. We expect a successful go live for
Carecast with the entire UCLH complex in April."