Royal Cornwall takes plunge with Oceano

Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust has awarded CSE Healthcare a three year contract to deliver an emergency department information system.

The trust will become the first in the country to take the initial module of CSE’s new Oceano acute medical system.

The company will install the foundation layer and emergency department module in the emergency and casualty departments at Royal Cornwall Hospital and West Cornwall Hospital.

CSE managing director Alan Stubbs told eHealth Insider: “We plan to enable Cornwall to be live in September.”

The company says the emergency department module will provide functionality for triage, ordering, observations, clinical documentation, discharge, coding, reporting and patient tracking using interactive whiteboards, tracking lists and floor plans.

Toby Slade, an emergency medicine consultant at Royal Cornwall, said: “Modern IT systems play an important part in delivering safe, high quality care to our patients.

“We have looked carefully at a number of systems to find the right one capable of meeting our needs and we are looking forward to reaping the benefits we expect Oceano to bring.”

Royal Cornwall is the first acute system contract that CSE has won for Oceano and marks a critical step in its ambition to grow beyond its heartland of community and mental health, where it has enjoyed considerable success with RiO.

Stubbs told EHI: “This is the first module that we’ve sold, but its sits on the underlying platform of the Oceano patient administration system, and we will soon be adding additional modules on top, including order communications and electronic prescribing.”

CSE has also been working with University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust to develop its PICS clinical system, which CSE is now selling to other NHS trusts.

Stubbs said he was confident of gaining momentum in the acute sector in 2011. “Our plan for 2011 is quite aggressive. We’ve already won our first emergency care order and intend to also win our first PICS and Oceano PAS orders. I’m pretty confident we will do it.”

Questioned on what the Oceano name meant, Stubbs said “RiO is a river and an ocean is bigger than a river”.

Asked about Oceano’s integration with RiO, Sue Hawkswell managing director of CSE Healthcare, said: “Integration is very easy, and that’s important because we expect to see a lot of trusts taking on community and mental health services.”

Alistair Eaton, director of strategic development at CSE Healthcare said: “In winning the contract with Royal Cornwall Hsopitals we have taken another major step along the road to becoming a leading provider of systems to the acute sector.”

The contract was awarded to CSE following a six month OJEU procurement. The trust will run the system locally, though a hosted version of Oceano is also available.