BT announces first RiO in South

BT has announced its first deployment of the RiO community and mental health system in the South of England.

Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust has become the first to go live with the system as part of the additional contract that BT was awarded under the National Programme for IT in the NHS in April this year.

When the system is fully rolled out, it will be used by around 3,000 people across the trust’s mental heath, learning disability and drug and alcohol services, which serve more than 1.3m people.

Fiona Edwards, trust chief executive, said: “This is the culmination of a lot of hard work and determination by skilled and committed staff from Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, BT and its supplier, CSE Healthcare Systems.

"Our staff work across multiple care settings and geographically dispersed sites, but we will now have accurate, up to date information that is quickly and securely accessible.”

RiO has in many cases replaced paper-based systems and covers a range of clinical and administrative functions. It enables staff to access electronic case records, allocate, share and reassign caseloads and record treatments.

The trust has implemented the latest version of RiO, which provides single sign on using a smartcard, access to the NHS patient demographic details and access to Choose and Book.

During the summer, RiO upgrades in London were put on hold after a series of performance issues meant that trusts were experiencing very slow response times and patient data was not being reliably saved by the system.

The upgrades resumed in September and according to BT, the roll-out of RiO in London is more than 80% complete and is in use by more than 40,000 healthcare professionals.

Sir Jonathan Michael, managing director of BT Health, said: “Going live at Surrey and Borders represents a significant milestone for BT, the trust and the national programme.

“As the first trust to go live since BT's contract was extended to cover deployment in the South of England, it demonstrates how the national programme in the South is gathering momentum.”

BT will be paid £546m to install RiO in 25 mental and community health sites in the South, to support the ‘Live8’ acute trusts that installed Cerner Millennium before former LSP Fujitsu left the programme, and to put Cerner into four more acute trusts.

Link: BT Health