Queen Mary's to investigate EMIS Web

NHS Wandsworth is exploring whether EMIS Web could take the role intended for Cerner Millenium at Queen Mary’s Hospital in Roehampton, London.

The primary care trust has abandoned plans to install Millenium at Queen Mary’s Hospital, as reported by E-Health Insider in May, saying the system is not suited to modern community-based services.

Last week Phil Scott, ICT director for NHS Wandsworth, told an event held to unveil EMIS Web that it was now in talks with EMIS about the possibility of using the company’s next generation system at Queen Mary’s Hospital.

Scott said the trust was beginning to scope out how EMIS could meet the needs of Queen Mary’s as a federated polyclinic.

He added: “I take the view that EMIS can really facilitate quite significant clinical recall and appointment stuff that we do in hospital patient administration systems.

"There is the potential to develop EMIS Web for secondary care outpatients, minor injuries, endoscopies and so on, and that is something we are very keen to take forward.”

Scott told EHI Primary Care that the trust was at the stage of drawing up a scoping and proposal document with EMIS. He estimated that it would be two years before EMIS Web would be ready to be installed at Queen Mary’s Hospital, if the project went ahead.

The hospital currently shares an iSoft patient administration system with Kingston Hospital NHS Trust, which is due to go live with Cerner Millenium in September.

Scott said the trust would continue with the iSoft PAS at Queen Mary’s Hospital, pending a switch to a different system.

The planned implementation of Millenium across Kingston and Queen Mary’s Hospital was to have been the attempt by local service provider BT to install Millenium at more than one NHS organisation using a shared domain model.

All GP practices in NHS Wandsworth use EMIS systems and NHS Wandsworth is among a handful of PCTs that have been trialling EMIS Web which is due to be ready for full roll-out to GPs in November.