Accenture signs with iSOFT for Lorenzo

Six months after being awarded the contracts to act as Local Service Provider for the National Programme for IT (NPfIT) in the Eastern and North East regions of England, Accenture has finalised its agreement with iSOFT to act as it provider of core clinical and administration applications.

Accenture will use iSOFT's Lorenzo enterprise-wide clinical and administrative applications, currently under development.  Lorenzo is said to facilitate the flow of information across the entire healthcare community, including GPs, hospitals and patients.

In addition Accenture has announced that in April iSOFT delivered the first release of Lorenzo.  The delivery marks a key milestone for iSOFT, which is providing Lorenzo to three of the five clusters through which the national programme is being delivered, the additional cluster being the North West.

The software is said to have been developed and tested so that it is fully compliant with NPfIT requirements, and designed from the ground up to be delivered by third party organisations such as Accenture.

"This is a significant step towards fulfilling our commitment to deliver an integrated care records service for individuals in the East and North East," said Ken Lacey, global managing partner of Accenture's Health & Life Sciences practice.

Tim Whiston, CEO of iSOFT said: "This release of Lorenzo demonstrates our ability to produce comprehensive, leading-edge healthcare applications for delivery by third-party organisations."

He added: "We are delighted to work with Accenture to deliver an application service that supports the information management requirements of an entire health community."

According to Accenture, by the end of 2004 clinicians will begin to see the benefits of new systems, such as electronic patient information and access to related healthcare information.

Asked for details of how Lorenzo will serve the entire health community, and whether GPs will be forced to use Lorenzo solutions, an Accenture spokesperson told E-health Insider: "Accenture will be providing GP support based on existing clinical administrative systems – in fact we are required to provide a choice of systems, which at some point in the future may include Lorenzo."

The spokesperson added that the rollout of Lorenzo will be "tiered". "Accenture is working with the NPfIT to support hospitals that would like this solution."