Three London Trusts Sign £5m Deal with iSOFT

NHS trusts in South East London’s Lambeth Lewisham and Southwark Collaboration have signed three contracts worth £5m with healthcare applications systems supplier, iSOFT.

The three trusts involved – Lewisham Hospital NHS Trust, King’s College Hospital NHS Trusts and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Trust – will use iSOFT’s Patient Management System (PiMS). The eight year contract will provide centralised patient information to over 4,000 professional staff.

The new system will provide a replacement for the Trusts’ IRC PAS, casemix and dental systems and will include options for future updates in the A&E, theatres, maternity and radiology departments.

The PiMS systems will be integrated with existing iSOFT Clinical Manager systems at King’s College and Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospitals to provide an electronic patient record of level three/four under the definitions set out in the government’s NHS IT strategy, Information for Health.

A level three EPR system must have an integrated patient master index, patient administration and departmental systems, plus electronic clinical orders, results reporting, prescribing and multi-professional care pathways. Level four requires added functionality for clinical knowledge and decision support. An initial target for 35% of acute trusts to have reached this level was missed in March 2002 when it emerged that just 5% of trusts had met the requirement.

Lewisham Hospital NHS Trust chief executive, Claire Perry, said, “iSOFT provided us with a partner with whom we can deliver the NHS EPR agenda and have the confidence that the solution that we are implementing today will continue to be enhanced to meet our requirements in the future.”