Salisbury NHS signs up to Lorenzo electronic patient record system

Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust has become the latest NHS trust to choose the Lorenzo electronic patient record system (EPR) from CSC.

The trust chose CSC as its preferred bidder and hopes to negotiate a ten-year contract for the system. It plans to implement the EPR in two phases over a two-year period, with the first phase completed by summer 2016, a spokesperson from the trust told Computer Weekly.

“We see introducing the electronic patient record as a positive step and are looking forward to working with CSC to identify the exact modules we will implement," said the trust.

The first phase will replace its 20 year-old  i.PM patient administration system – which is also owned by CSC after the company bought iSoft in 2011. The first phase includes implementing an ED system, order communications and results reporting, clinical documentation and data warehouse, according to Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust's public board papers.

The second phase includes maternity, e-prescribing, theatres, a clinical portal and a third-party patient portal.

The trust went out to tender for an EPR in October 2014 and received 18 bids, with six continuing to the invitation-to-tender stage. Salisbury's outline business case identified “cash releasing benefits of almost £12m over 10 years and non-cash releasing benefits of circa £5.7m over 10 years,” the papers said.

CSC, with its Lorenzo EPR, has had a turbulent time in the NHS. The system was a part of the National Programme for IT (NPfIT), where it was contracted with exclusive rights to deploy the system to NHS trusts in the North, Midlands and East of England (NME). But the project failed to deliver its milestones a number of times.

Whereas some areas of the programme worked to plan, the overall NPfIT project was branded a “disaster”. The government scrapped the programme in 2011, but kept its contract with CSC. After several negotiations with the government, the revised agreement stated that trusts in the NME would be given central funding to offset deployment and running costs, if they could provide a business case for taking the EPR.

But the debacle doesn’t seem to have stopped CSC, and healthcare remains one of its strongest businesses in the UK. CSC has won a number of contracts and its Lorenzo system is now deployed in 12 trusts across the country, with eight of those going live in the past year.  A further six, including Salisbury, have signed up to the system.

A spokesperson from CSC told Computer Weekly that the technology will help the trust’s staff “dramatically transform the way they deliver care”.

“Our Lorenzo system provides a foundation for integrating care across the trust, allowing clinicians to access information wherever it is required, and improving the quality of patient information and the management of patient records," the spokesperson said.