Liverpool set for CSC clinical portal

The Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust is to start rolling out its CSC clinical portal this month.

The trust was the first in England to sign a contract for the portal in November last year, after a proof of concept pilot.

Its electronic patient record project manager, Alison Clare, told eHealth Insider this "far exceeded" expectations and reduced clinic times by about 30 minutes.

The pilot also looked at the availability of the portal, its speed and performance, and whether the information pulled from separate systems was accurate.

The portal will be rolled out to diabetes, dermatology, haematology, cardiology, renal, dental and orthopaedics outpatient services throughout July and August. The aim is to extend use of the portal to inpatient services over time.

"We can't make the assumption that just because it works in outpatients that it's going to work in the other areas, so we want to do pilots in those areas too,” Clare said.

CSC has worked with Carefx to integrate a number of trust systems through its Fusionfx platform.

The functionality in phase one of the portal roll-out includes integration with seven different systems, such as order communications system Sunquest ICE, clinical letters, PACS, electronic discharge and data from the i.Patient Manager patient administration system.

Clare said the trust has about 17 systems running that it hopes to integrate and make accessible through the portal.

She added that the trust has been working to adapt the piloted system to give it a better, more trust specific look and feel and to make sure that specific data that consultants require is being captured.

It is expected that the full roll-out to both outpatient and inpatient services will take about 12 months. The trust is simultaneously implementing digital dictation, single sign-on and e-prescribing.

EHealth Insider recently visited The Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust to see how the IT department is preparing for a major hospital rebuild. For full coverage, see the ‘focus on’ report in the Insight section.