Prison health IT roll out complete

CSC has announced that it has completed the national roll-out of TPP’s SystmOne Prison software to all 136 prisons in England.

The company said the roll-out meant healthcare professionals would have access to a single electronic record for each offender.

The technology is particularly vital, given the transitory nature of the prison population and its complex healthcare requirements.

CSC said there are more than 400,000 movements of offenders between prisons in England each year.

TPP's central storage solution for electronic records means a healthcare professional can follow an offender through the prison system almost instantly.

The prison solution was first tested by early adopters in 2006 and was then adopted by the Department of Health as its national solution in 2009. The roll out was completed earlier this year.

CSC, the local service provider across the North, Midlands and East of England, said the scale and pace of the programme had been made possible by collaboration between itself, TPP, the DH’s offender health team, Connecting for Health and local NHS organisations.

Andrew Spence, CSC director of UK healthcare strategy, said the programme underlined how multiple stakeholders could work together to deliver solutions on a national basis.

He added: “It is encouraging that the prison service across the whole of England viewed our solution as the most efficient and effective way to meet their healthcare requirements.

"This work is an example of how CSC is transforming healthcare with better information for better decisions: helping to save lives and money.”

Sue Hughes, prison health IT programme manager for CfH, said healthcare staff were reporting that the national clinical IT system was making a real difference to their efforts to provide better and safer care for prisoners.

She added: “It was important for us to implement the system quickly and this could not have happened without the highly effective implementation approach and the close and collaborative working arrangements between ourselves and all the many parties involved, including CSC and software supplier TPP.”

Drew Littler, TPP director, said TPP was delighted that the roll-out of SystmOne to all prisons had been completed.

He added: “A huge amount of work goes into researching, developing and implementing SystmOne for each individual site with the result that all prisons are now benefiting from our product.”