Sussex Partnership may move to Lorenzo

Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust has signed a five-year deal with iSoft that includes an option for it to become an early adopter of Lorenzo.

The trust has renewed its deal for iSoft Patient Management (formerly known as iPatient Manager or iPM). As part of the deal, iSoft will install the latest version of the application and support it for up to five years.

It will also “consider the option in the next six months of becoming iSoft’s first UK-based Lorenzo early adopter outside the National Programme for IT in the NHS.”

Jane Rennie, the trust’s director of information management and technology, said in a statement: “It was a natural decision to continue using a system that everyone is familiar with and that we all trust.

"ISoft has a clear product development pathway, with Lorenzo being the natural progression.”

Rennie added that most community and mental health trusts traditionally used only 30-40% of their PAS functions and Sussex Partnership was keen to ‘sweat the assets’ to get the most from its investment.

She argued that Lorenzo was an “ideal platform” to support mobile working, which the trust needs because it runs 120 sites and many of its staff are based in the community.

The Sussex Partnership deal is one of two announced by iSoft Group Limited this morning. It also announced a deal with NHS Supply Chain to refresh its hardware and to host its e-commerce and logistics applications for a further three years.

The Australian-based company put the value of the two deals at £4.8m, with a £1.5m payment to HP as part of the NHS Supply Chain deal.

UK and Ireland managing director Adrian Stevens said the Sussex Partnership deal was “testimony to our ability to deliver solutions that meet customer expectations and a strategy for future needs.”

He added: “It is very gratifying that one of the most highly regarded specialist mental health trusts in England is looking to start its Lorenzo journey by contracting directly with iSoft.

“Such a move is fully aligned with our strategy of providing a clear migration path to our customers in the South of England from existing, proven solutions to Lorenzo.”

The South of England has been without a local service provider since Fujitsu left the national programme in May 2008. A series of ASCC procurements are being run for the region.

However, iSoft announced last October that it would take Lorenzo direct to trusts in the South, focusing on migrating existing customers to the strategic electronic patient record to avoid ‘big bang’ implementations.

CSC is still due to deliver Lorenzo Regional Care to the North, Midlands and East of England under the national programme, but future releases have been scaled back because of demands for cost savings from the government.

The NME delivery schedule is also unclear because of University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust's failure to go live with the latest version of Lorenzo Regional Care at the end of March.