Cerner and Fujitsu deliver first South implementation

Nuffield Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Trust has become the first hospital in the South of England to go live with an electronic patient records system from Cerner, implemented by Fujitsu, under the NHS National Programme for IT.

The initial implementation comes almost two years after Fujitsu was first awarded an £896 million local service provider (LSP) contract to upgrade NHS IT systems across the South of England. The LSP is currently almost 12 months behind its original delivery schedule having changed its core clinical solution provider earlier this year. 

Significantly, the Nuffield implementation contains a lot more clinical functionality the patient administration systems (PAS) – currently being offered in other clusters. In addition to PAS, Nuffield is also getting a radiology information system (RIS), reporting module and theatre scheduling, with clinicals and order communications to follow soon.

A spokesperson for Fujitsu told E-Health Insider: "We can confirm that the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre NHS Trust, Oxford, has become the first hospital trust in the South of England, to go live with the implementation of the new electronic patient records under the NHS Connecting for Health, National Programme for IT."

A spokesperson for NHS Connecting for Health told EHI. "We can confirm that Nuffield Orthopaedic Hospital has gone live with an implementation form Cerner."

The trust, however, declined to offer any comment at this stage saying it planned to make a statement in a few days.

According to Fujitsu the system provided to Nuffield contains PAS, RIS, ADT [reporting module] and theatre scheduling "and is connected to the spine". The LSP said that the RIS has been implemented in parallel with the Care Records Service.

The implementation represents a significant milestone for Fujitsu and Cerner. Until now Fujitsu had not implemented any major hospital systems, though it has with GE delivered a number of picture archiving and communication systems.

In June Fujitsu announced that it had received permission from NHS Connecting for Health, the agency responsible for delivering the NHS IT programme, to replace its key sub-contractor IDX systems with Cerner’s Millennium product. Fujitsu signed a contract with Cerner at the beginning of September.

In January 2003 Fujitsu was awarded a £896 million contract by the Department of Health to provide modern NHS IT systems across the South of England. The contract was won with Fujitsu bidding IDX’s Last Word product, which was subsequently switched to its Care Cast product.

Cerner is understood to be delivering an anglicised version of its Millennium product in the South, essentially the same version of the system it developed for the Homerton and Newham hospitals in London.

Having got its initial hospital implementation underway EHI understands that Fujitsu and Cerner are bullish about their ability to deliver a total of six implementations by Easter and a further 11  by July.