Worthing decides to switch off Cerner

Worthing and Southlands Hospitals NHS Trust has agreed plans to switch off its Cener Millennium electronic records software and move back to its old Sema-Helix software.

As first reported by E-Health Insider on 26 January, the trust has been examining whether to move from its current Cerner Millennium system back to its old Sema-Helix patient administration system as part of a merger with neighbour Royal West Sussex (RWS).

The new NHS trust, to be created in April from the proposed merger of RWS and Worthing and Southlands Hospitals (WaSH), will adopt the Helix Patient Administration System to ensure the continued safe management of medical records across the three sites.

The future IT plans will still have to be ratified by the board of the newly merged trust, but had previously been described as one of several options.

The Helix system is currently in use at RWS and was also used at WaSH prior to the introduction of the Cerner Millennium Care Records Service (CRS) software in September 2007.

The trust says it remains committed in the long-term to adopting a National Programme solution to implement a Sussex-wide CRS.

E-Health Insider understands that the Worthing and Southlands trust board decided to switch back to Sema-Helix following an options appraisal exercise.

EHI has learned that the WASH board decided it was more sensible to transfer to a familiar system still being used at RWS, than to move RWS to an entirely new platform – one unsupported by an LSP - on a temporary basis.

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Worthing may dump Cerner Millennium