Lorenzo likely to be further delayed

The deployment of Lorenzo release 1 to three early adopter sites is likely to be further delayed, E-Health Insider has learned.

University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust was scheduled to deploy the first release of iSoft’s key product this weekend.

But the trust, its local strategic health authority and NHS Connecting for Health all refused to say that this would happen when contacted by EHI this week.

As recently as April, the SHA, NHS North West, appeared confident that they would be hosting the first deployment of Lorenzo in the country.

Chief information and knowledge officer, Alan Spours, told the SHA board on 29 April: “Morecambe Bay is still scheduled to deploy the first release of Lorenzo on the 16th June 2008 in their role as an early adopter.”

However, when EHI contacted NHS North West and the trust’s press office, both referred the questions to CfH as the agency in charge of the National Programme for IT.

A press release later issued by all three organisations said: “The Lorenzo system is being deployed at all three early adopter sites (Morecambe Bay, Bradford and South Birmingham).

“[The local service provider] CSC, CfH, the relevant SHAs and the trusts themselves are working together as a strong collaboration to ensure that the system goes live at all three sites during the summer.

“All three projects are currently on track to achieve this milestone. As expected, deployment testing is identifying technical issues which are being resolved on an ongoing basis.

“Collectively, the early adopter trusts, SHAs, NHS CfH and CSC recognise the need to achieve the necessary quality criteria for go-live and view this as more important than a particular date.”

In other words, the statement did not say the deployment would go ahead this week, although none of the respondents would confirm whether it would or not. EHI understands that the system has been delivered.

The delay is the latest in a long line stretching back to the original planned delivery date for Lorenzo R1, which fell at the end of 2004.

Health minister Ben Bradshaw said in March this year that the software had been regularly assessed by CfH and laid out deployment plans.

He said release 1 would be deployed from June 2008; release 2 from November 2008; release 3 from July 2009; and release 4 from March 2010. He also said release 1 would be deployed over legacy patient administration systems, but provide some clinical benefits, such as results reporting.

The further evidence of delays in deployment to early adopter sites suggests the timescales for delivery of the complete Lorenzo system could well slip, with NHS North West recently suggesting this could stretch to as late as 2016.

Although the local service provider, CSC, signed a memorandum of understanding with CfH earlier this year, it has yet to seal a contract reset negotiation.

In his update to the board, Spours said this was “expected to be agreed by mid-May” and that it would include “a revised outline implementation plan for all organisations up to 2016, based on new Lorenzo 4 releases.”

He also said: “North West SHA has achieved the inclusion of ‘interoperability’ i.e. exchange of patient data between existing GP systems and Lorenzo as a key strategic change in contract” – suggesting this was not in implementation plans before.