Moorfields ready to Open Eyes

Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is going live with the first three clinical modules of its open source electronic patient record early next month.

The move will allow the trust to switch off its legacy system, called ePatient.

The Open Eyes patient administration system went live in January with functionality that includes booking and waiting list management.

The plan was for the first three clinical modules to be deployed last week, but a need for further training has led to the short delay.

The new operation notes module will involve a consultant noting the procedure done, pulling information directly from the booking note and then adding information about the surgery, such as the length of an incision.

The module includes a diagram tool designed by the hospital’s consultants for their own use.

Project director Bill Aylward said few EPRs offered good drawing functionality, and he aimed to change that. His team has done a lot of work on diagram packages.

“Feedback has been very good, the clinicians love it because it’s designed by them,” he said. “The collaborative model works very well with doctors.”

The second new module is for prescriptions. Inputting data will be made faster by giving clinicians a default standardised set of drugs that are usually prescribed after a specific operation, which can then be modified.

The final additional module is correspondence. This involves discharge letters for GPs that are pre-populated with information such as the latest surgery and prescription and the post-operative review.

They will not be sent electronically at first, but plans are in place to start emailing them to practices.

About 100 consultants, 100 junior doctors and 50 administrative staff are using the system. Aylward said the benefits of introducing the system are being closely monitored because the development is being funded by the trust.

Moorfields has invested £3.5m in Open Eyes over four years and the system is expected to save £4.5m over the same time.

“They [the trust] are happy to fund it on the basis that they get their money back over a three year period,” Aylward said. “The crucial part is getting rid of paper notes, we have to deliver this and we will.”

There is also a document scanning project running in parallel for all the hospital’s historical notes. Copies of these will then be made available within Open Eyes. This project is part of a separate business case.

“With these two things we can kiss paper notes goodbye,” added Aylward.

Read more about the Open Eyes project in Insight.