Oxford goes live with Cerner Millennium

Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust has gone live with Cerner Millennium and is preparing for further roll-outs this weekend.

The trust was one of three ‘greenfield’ sites scheduled to receive the system BT in a deal concluded in April last year, as part of the National Programme for IT in the NHS.

The trust told eHealth Insider it launched the system in the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, and is planning to extend it to its remaining three hospital sites this weekend.

The trust is initially using the system for administration purposes, such as the booking of patient appointments and the generation of patient letters.

A spokesperson said the next few months would see go-live for administrative use at the John Radcliffe, the Churchill, and the Horton General hospitals. This will be followed by the introduction of clinical functionality.

If all goes to plan with this weekend’s go-live, the trust will have implemented a unified electronic health record spanning all of its hospitals.

The spokesperson said the initial implementation of the system for administration use had “obvious advantages” for the trust.

“Greater legibility of key clinical information and increased accuracy and immediacy of recording on an electronic system will also increase patient safety and lessen clinical risk.”

The trust sees technology and, in particular, the greater adoption of electronic systems as having a key role to play in improving patient care while meeting financial challenges.

It has been migrating from an in-house patient administration system, Oxpas, that was first installed in 1979.

The Department of Health signed a deal with BT in April 2010 that saw it take over support for the ‘live eight’ (now seven) trusts using Cerner Millennium in the South, to roll-out the system to three greenfield sites, and to install CSE Healthcare’s RiO at 25 trusts.

Royal United Hospital Bath was the first of the greenfield sites to go live when it launched the system at the end of July.

It’s unclear when the final site – North Bristol NHS Trust – is planning to go live but all three sites were expected to have gone live with Millennium by the end of this year.