RiO upgrade scheduled for March

BT has upgraded 15,000 users of RiO in London and the South to Release 1- and Release 1.1 will start rolling out next month.

BT holds the national contract to deploy the CSE Healthcare system in community and mental health trusts in London and the South. Release 1 is the third version.

David Hack, head of BT’s community and mental health business unit, said earlier versions were strong from an administrative perspective, while Release 1 added a lot of clinical functionality.

Using RiO2RiO, clinicians within a trust can see relevant patient notes from other specialities, allowing for multi-disciplinary reviews of patient care.

Release 1 also provides a more streamlined referral process which allows the monitoring of referral to treatment time with clinicians able to see where their patients sit on waiting lists.

A further key function is outpatient prescribing for community health and the use of SNOMED CT standardised terms for conditions and medications. A number of prescribing improvements will be made in Release 1.1.

Hack said RiO had been deployed in 37 community and mental health trusts in London and 25 in the South. Various amalgamations mean it is now used by 21 trusts in London and 17 in the South.

About 100,000 health care professionals are using the system - mostly v5.4, which is the version before R1 –of which 15,000 have recently been upgraded to R1.

London Programme for IT deputy programme director for community and mental health Morfydd Williams said BT was upgrading up to three trusts every weekend over 2012.

She said feedback so far had been positive, but more concrete benefits would become clear over time.

“It [Release 1] is good for patients because it addresses a lot of the clinical safety issues that exist with paper records dispersed across organisations held by many people in a number of different places,” she said.

“This brings the information into one place to allow you to interact in multi-disciplinary way.”

Williams said a couple of London trusts would say they now have a functioning electronic patient record system and further updates served to enhance that record and make it more clinically rich.

“It’s kind of frustrating because the national programme does get a lot of criticism, but the RiO programme has been very successful,” she said.

“The product is informed by our user group and informed by clinicians - that has been absolutely critical in making this successful because we are actually delivering something people want.”

Williams said Release 2 was under development and would have improvements with regards to child health and more local flexibility. It will be deployed from Autumn next year.

She added that trusts would have to re-tender for a community mental health system when national contracts came to an end.

The London Programme for IT is working with trusts on what the procurement should look like and how many want to work collaboratively.

“But at the end of the day they will have to go out and procure, they can’t just choose to extend the contract,” Williams explained. “That process is underway at the moment.”

EHI Primary Care reporter Rebecca Todd went to Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust to see Release 1 in action. A report appears in today's Insight section.