North Cumbria goes live with Ascribe

North Cumbria University Hospitals NHS Trust has announced a multi-site go live of Ascribe’s hospital pharmacy and management systems.

The trust chose Ascribe’s latest web pharmacy system in June last year. It wanted to replace its old pharmacy system, which could not provide the detailed patient medication records that it wanted for its three dispensaries in Whitehaven and Carlisle.

It also decided to take the Ascribe medicines management module, which allows pharmacy staff to order prescriptions from the pharmacy while working on the wards.

Kathryn Ball, deputy chief pharmacist at North Cumbria, told E-Health Insider: “What we had before this new system was basically just stock control and something that produced labels.

“We needed a modern and integrated departmental solution to allow pharmacy staff to visit wards, collate prescription requests, and communicate these electronically to the site’s central pharmacy.

"So far, the system is fine, although we’re having a few problems waiting for screens to refresh, which just need ironing out.”

Ascribe has more than 200 hospital pharmacy customers. The company believes that many of them will upgrade to its present product in order to implement electronic prescribing and medicines management systems, in accordance with the Department of Health guidelines.

Stephen Critchlow, executive chairman of Ascribe said: “The new Ascribe web based pharmacy system provides am interoperability platform that enables us to work with any third party supplier, as well as integrate with our own suite of applications which now cover most IT requirements in secondary care.”

North Cumbria University Hospitals NHS Trust has also purchased Ascribe’s emergency care system, Symphony, an electronic patient record for emergency departments and minor injuries units.

The system will allow A&E to monitor patient's progress, allocate resources and track performance targets and will be implemented during the summer.

Link: Ascribe

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