Fujitsu says ‘full steam ahead’ in South

Half of the Southern cluster’s 35 sites have agreed ‘full steam-ahead’ go-live dates to take the initial Millennium patient administration system, E-Health Insider has learned from local service provider (LSP) for the region, Fujitsu.

Fujitsu’s managing director for the UK public sector, Peter Hutchinson, told E-Health Insider that the local service provider is engaged in projects with 17 NHS trusts, covering 50 NHS hospitals. He said all will either have Millennium Release Zero or Millennium Release One by the end of 2008.

“We have full steam ahead plans to implement Millennium in 17 trusts, with a timetable in place to deploy a mixture of R0 and R1 into these sites. We anticipate that these will be completed by this time next year. Eight further projects are in the support phase, going at a slower pace to enable the trusts to put together a full business case and there are four trusts who we are not currently scheduling plans with but have spoken to.”

The Fujitsu public sector boss said that of the 17 installations six would be R0s and the rest R1s. "R1 testing is complete and we have authority to proceed. We are now responding to additional change requests from the trusts." He confirmed that this included issues such as mental health requirements.

Six sites have so far installed the R0 version of Millennium. The remaining 12 sites have been in discussions with the LSP, where negotiations are ongoing towards agreeing a transition date.

The Fujitsu boss said four of the 12 have chosen not to start implementation planning yet. "We’re talking to all the trusts – there are just four that don’t have a full-steam ahead implementation plan in place yet," said Hutchinson.

Hutchinson was unable to give EHI full details of detailed timetables, but said full business proposals were in place and are being followed up. While declining to offer hostages to fortune on dates Hutchinson said of the deployment schedule. "It speeds up next year. It’s a progressive acceleration."

He stressed that past problems had now largely been resolved and that there have been significant delays. "It’s no secret that some of our deployments are significantly late," said Hutchinson. "But I would argue that there is now a fantastic amount of momentum."

The key behind successful trust implementations he said was that they are led from the top. "The secret is to be led from the top. Where they delegate to the IT department it has been more of a problem.

Hutchinson used Fujitsu’s most recent installation as an example: "Everyone thought Surrey and Sussex would be really tough, but the project was a success largely because it was led by the chief executive and head of nursing."

Asked to what extent the NHS Local Ownership Programme (NLOP) was shaping developments the Fujitsu boss said: "NLOP is influencing everything now and we are working much more closely with SHAs and trusts."

Hutchinson told EHI he is confident Fujitsu will still deliver the full requirements of the contract. "We would expect to deliver everything in the OBS [output based specification] by the end of the contract."