North Staffs prepares for big bang

University Hospital of North Staffordshire NHS Trust is getting ready to go live with patient administration and clinical systems from iSoft some three years after it first signed the contract – and over two years late.

April 30 marked the third anniversary of North Staffordshire NHS Trust signing a contract with iSoft for its iPM patient administration system and iCM clinical management system, together with theatres and maternity, coding and a data warehouse.

The most recent a go-live date in April had to be rescheduled, with the system now due to be switched on in a ‘big bang’ implementation by 30 June.

Geoff Harnett, assistant director of IM&T at University Hospital of North Staffordshire NHS Trust confirmed to E-Health Insider that the April date had "not happened, it’s now 30 June, we’ve had a few provisional dates".

Phase one of the project was originally due to have gone live on 8 March 2004. But according to schedules seen by E-Health Insider in December 2003 the project schedule was revised backwards to see the go live move to 17 May 2004.

A series of subsequent go live dates have since been rescheduled, including July 2005 and December 2005. "We have had a few target dates," acknowledged Harnett.

In a joint statement iSoft and the trust told EHI: "Any rescheduling was jointly agreed as being in the best interests of achieving the overall aims of the project.”

One reason for the delays quoted by two sources was the pressure put on iSoft’s resources by other work. By December 2004 iSoft had been selected as the main software provider in three of the five clusters of the NHS National Programme for IT.

The trust, which is in the middle of the North West and West Midlands cluster, had signed directly with iSoft for a clinical IT system, though not for the Lorenzo product the company is contracted to deliver under the NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT). "It’s not Lorenzo but a lot more functionality than just iCM and iPM," said Harnett.

In addition to iCM and iPM the trust contracted for: Evolution for maternity, Oriris for theatres, Medicode for coding, all linked into a common data warehouse.

"We’ve got six system implementations all to be integrated and to go live in a big bang," said Harnett.

The assistant IM&T director told EHI that the trust was working to a June go live date, but added: "We won’t go live unless it’s working properly."

In their joint statement the trust and iSoft said that a lot of time was being taken to migrate 10 years of clinical data from a diverse range of systems: "One of the biggest challenges is the amount of historical data that needs to be ported to the new system."

The statement continued: " Data migration on this scale and complexity is something that is outside the scope of many NPfIT projects. iSoft is transferring ten years’ worth of clinical data from multiple, disparate sources. iSoft has vast experience and skills in this area and the priority for both parties is to ensure this huge exercise is done correctly.

When live the system will serve 7,000 NHS staff working across two main hospital sites, the Royal Infirmary and the City General, both in Stoke-on-Trent. Harnett said: "It’s had its challenges but we are very nearly there."