Winchester deploys new e-prescribing system
- 2 April 2009
Winchester and Eastleigh Healthcare NHS Trust deployed a hospital wide e-prescribing system in just four days.
The trust decided that its old e-prescribing system was outdated and chose JAC’s Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration solution to replace it.
Damien Kelly, the trust’s lead pharmacist electronic prescribing and pharmacy systems IT manager said: “The usual approach to deployment is an initial roll-out of e-prescribing on a few wards.
"But we were already reliant on e-prescribing, so we needed to have the entire system commissioned and running as quickly as possible, to minimise cross-over time between old and new systems. We needed to avoid data duplication and the potential risks this entails.”
Due to the large scale of the deployment the project team had a five month planning and management process, which worked towards the intended system transition date.
Kelly continued: “In some ways, our task was easier than implementing e-prescribing from scratch, as it was already a core part of our procedures and staff were already familiar with e-prescribing.
“But we also knew that we didn’t have the option of finding out feet slowly-the solution had to be deployed correctly and quickly first time.”
From when the contract was signed to when the system went live took just six months, with the transition from the legacy system to the new system completed in four days.
The trust decided to replace its original e-prescribing system, TDSs’ Desktop 7000, after it decided that it was no longer user friendly and lacked modern features, such as decision support and detailed reporting.
The new e-prescribing system coincided with the roll out of an electronic patient record through the National Programme for IT in the NHS, which included ePrescribing as part of its core offering.
It has allowed the trust to use mobile terminals with wireless connectivity, enabling staff to prescribe and administer medicines at the bedside.
Winchester and Eastleigh was the first organisation in England to deploy electronic prescribing around 20 years ago.
The trust manages both the Royal Hampshire County Hospital and the Andover War Memorial Hospital.
Following the deployment across the wards in Royal Hampshire, the trust plans to roll out the solution into Andover Community Hospital later this year.
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