Worcestershire signs for Oasis EPR

Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust has signed a ten year contract with Oasis to create an electronic patient record based on the integration of best-of-breed systems.

The contract for the integrated system, named Oasis OneView, also includes the implementation of an electronic prescribing system from NoemaLife, which will be the Italian-German company’s first UK deployment.

NoemaLife and Oasis announced a partnership in September to enable NoemaLife to extend its portfolio of products to the UK.

The trust’s director of ICT, John Thornbury, told eHealth Insider its Galileo e-prescribing system was the best fit for the trust’s needs.

“We looked at the technology of the solution and it has the ability to be configured more than other products in the current market-place. I am sure people will challenge that, but it has the potential to meet our needs.”

The trust’s specific requirements include implementing rules which control different levels of medication that individuals can prescribe.

“Ultimately the new system will improve patient safety by providing greater control and efficiency over how medicines are prescribed.”

The system will be rolled out across all the trust’s departments, once it has completed an Oasis ward whiteboard implementation, to improve staff access to real-time bed status information.

However, Thornbury said he intended to have all of the clinical systems stipulated under the new contract integrated into the trust's Oasis patient administration system by April next year.

Managing director of NoemaLife, Robyn Tolley, said the company had observed increased levels of interest in electronic prescribing and medicines administration systems.

“Now that the barriers of the [National Programme for IT in the NHS] have been lifted, we’re seeing a new energy from progressive trusts such as Worcestershire who recognise the positive impact that EPMA technology can bring to the organisation.”

The trust has been running an Oasis PAS for more than five years, and will use it as a foundation to integrate new and existing clinical systems across the trust, with a single view of data enabled by Orion Health’s Concerto clinical portal.

Thornbury said the deadline for having completed implementation of a fully integrated electronic patient record was ambiguous.

“It’s a moving target, because what do you define as an integrated EPR?” However, the best-of-breed integration model was going to provide the trust with more stability.

“A PAS is a PAS , but you want the stability to build around that. Why rip out our PAS and replace it when we have a perfectly good one already functioning?”

The contract will allow the trust to change which clinical systems it wanted to integrate with the PAS, if one was found to be unsuitable.

The systems named in the OneView contract include Oasis’ mobile solutions to enable tablet, phone and digital pen capture, dashboard modules and six different systems from Bluespier.