RiO upgrades restart in London

The programme of upgrades to the RiO community health software has re-started in London, with two primary care trusts now using the latest version.

Newham PCT received an upgrade to Version 5.1 earlier this month from local service provider BT, and has been followed by NHS Brent.

A spokesperson for BT told EHI Primary Care that further upgrades to Version 5.1 will happen in October and November.

The software supplied by CSE Healthcare is being implemented in primary care, community and mental health trusts across the capital the National Programme for IT in the NHS.

Implementations of Version 5.1, the first version of RiO to connect to the NHS Spine, were stopped in April after a series of performance problems were reported by sites that received the upgrade.

RiO is installed in 31 trusts. Twelve RiO sites received Version 5.1 before the freeze was put in place.

The upgrade also introduced smartcard authentication for the first time, requiring staff to use the National Care Record Service Smartcard to access the system.

BT is also providing RiO to 25 community and mental health trusts in the South of England. These are also understood to be on hold.