Next Lorenzo go-lives put back

Birmingham Women’s NHS Foundation Trust will not be going live with Lorenzo Care Management on Monday 6 September as planned.

The trust has confirmed that it has pushed back its go-live date, which was originally 10 May 2010, until it is sure that the system is “safe to be deployed.”

In a statement to E-Health Insider, the trust said: "Birmingham Women’s NHS Foundation Trust is now working towards a go-live date in early October to implement Lorenzo Care Management across the trust.

“Deployment plans are progressing at a safe and steady pace, and a series of checkpoints and a final assurance process are currently being worked through to ensure the system is ready to be deployed."

Birmingham Women's was meant to become the second acute trust to deploy Lorenzo Release 1.9, following on from University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust, which went live at the beginning of June.

Morecambe Bay has faced issues since the implementation, including a number of unresolved bugs within the system, data migration problems from the previous patient administration system, and slow running.

It had planned to go live with Release 2 of the software, which provides A&E functionality, on Tuesday 7 September. However, it has also decided to reschedule the date.

Patrick McGahon, director of service and commercial development at University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust, told E-Health Insider: “The provisional date for UHMBT to go live with Emergency Care is being re-scheduled.

“Re-scheduling the planned implementation of Lorenzo Emergency Care at the trust allows more time for the initial release to bed into business as usual operations.”

At the beginning of the summer, the Department of Health said that Birmingham Women’s NHS Foundation Trust, Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust and Kettering General Hospital NHS Foundation Trust would all go live with Lorenzo Release 1.9 “over later summer and early autumn.”

At the start of the week, iSoft chief executive Gary Cohen stepped down as the company announced significant losses, blamed, in part, on delays to its work for the National Programme for IT in the NHS.

The company's Lorenzo software is due to be deployed to trusts across the North, Midlands and East of England by local service provider CSC.