Order comms go-live planned for Leicester

University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust is planning to go live at the end of this month with the second phase of its deployment of an interim order communications systems supplied by iSoft and delivered by Computer Sciences Corporation.

Liz Simons, deputy director of IM&T at the trust, told last week’s Healthcare Interoperability Best Practice Showcase that testing of radiology order communications functionality was underway and that it was due to go live at the end of the month.

The trust plans for pathology order communications to follow in the summer of 2009. Jason Selby, software architect at the trust, said this would include a complete rebuild of pathology, re-indexing of patient records and automation of the service for both primary and acute care.

Leicester, one of the three largest trusts in the country, began the first phase of its implementation of iCM at the end of June, beginning with service orders on four wards at Leicester General Hospital. That has now been rolled out across all three of its sites.

The implementation was the first time under the the National Programme for IT that local service provider CSC had delivered iSoft’s iCM clinical software on top of an existing patient administration system as an ‘interim’ product.

Simons told the conference that in 2006 the trust had recognised the need to invest in local IT due to the slow down in the delivery of NPfIT.

She said the key business drivers included the need to reduce clinical errors through a single record, a service improvement programme including the 18 week wait target, a major private finance initiative build and a drive to save £38m a year through new ways of working and cutting administration costs. She said the trust was also applying for foundation status and needed better business intelligence.

“The existing systems were not smart enough,” she added.

The trust plans to use the system to provide an ‘interim’ solution until Lorenzo becomes available from CSC under the national programme.

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