Trafford joins clinical IT with Ensemble

Trafford Healthcare NHS Trust has announced it will integrate all of its clinical IT systems after signing a deal with InterSystems for its Ensemble integration engine.

Over the past few years, the trust has been using an old, in-house interface engine without a back-up or test platform. This meant new interfaces could not be tested or launched without causing disruption to other systems.

Interfaces that were already in place were difficult to support and maintain, while new ones had to be written with the support of third parties, which was expensive and restricted the sharing of patient information.

Stephen Parsons, IM&T project manager at Trafford Healthcare NHS Trust, said: “Ensemble is now the cornerstone of the trust’s IT strategy; it’s far more resilient than anything we had previously.

"Its flexibility to work in a number of different environments means that we can test new links without interfering with the working of the hospital in any way, making it much easier and cheaper in the past."

He added that being able to see Ensemble in action at Bolton Hospital had been a factor in the trust's decision to go with InterSystems.

The new platform, which will go-live at the beginning of August, will link all the trust's hospital systems with its composite electronic patient record supplied by Graphnet, and provide support for a number of integration interface engines using HL7.

It will also provide the trust with a configuration management environment to support its quality management process with three environments; live, back-up and test.

The InterSystems' team will work together with the trusts to transfer skills to the IT team for the development if interface messages into a wide variety of formats.

Nick Hanson, healthcare manager at InterSystems said: “Choosing Ensemble will help the trust to improve its admission, discharge and transfer processes and will seamlessly join information across the hospital’s existing systems.

“Ensemble will enable the trust to consolidate its electronic patient records to improve patient care through real time clinical decision support.”

Link: InterSystems