Hereford deploys Lorenzo R1

Hereford Hospital

Hereford Hospitals NHS Trust has gone-live with Lorenzo in its rheumatology department.

The trust went live at the start of September with Release 1 of the iSoft electronic patient record in a CSC implementation as part of the National Programme for IT in the NHS.

Andrew Spence, CSC’s director of healthcare strategy, told E-Health Insider: “We’ve put Hereford live on the first release of Lorenzo.

"We agreed with the trust that Lorenzo was the right solution for their business needs.”

In April, director general of informatics Christine Connelly set the programme’s remaining local service providers deadlines to make significant progress with the ‘strategic’ systems they are due to deliver to the NHS.

CSC must get Lorenzo Release 1.9 into a care setting by November and working smoothly in an acute setting by March. Spence said that although iSoft and CSC were focused on the deadlines, they were also working with earlier releases of Lorenzo.

“We work to the needs of the NHS, and although the public deadlines are important so are local issues," he said. "Hereford had a need and we worked with them to sort it out. It’s quietly gone live without anyone noticing.”

In his interview at CSC’s offices in St Mary Axe, London, Spence said the future of both companies was tied to Lorenzo. “iSoft’s future, as much as CSC’s in healthcare, is dependent on the development of Lorenzo,” he said.

However, Spence declined to comment on what would happen if the deadlines set by Connelly were not met and whether CSC was contractually bound by the cut-off dates.

He said: “CSC doesn’t really talk about the nature of its contracts and what happens if we do or don’t meet the deadline.

“We are confident that both the November and March deadlines will be met. We’re working with NHS Connecting for Health and a number of trusts for the subsequent roll-out, so we haven’t got all of our efforts focused on November and March.

“We’re planning for a successful long-term roll-out of Releases 1 and all the subsequent releases.”

ISoft declined to comment on how dependent it is on the National Programme contract. Hereford Hospitals NHS Trust was also unable to provide more information on its deployment.

Link: CSC

iSoft

EHI Interview: Read more from E-Health Insider’s exclusive interview with Andrew Spence in the opinion and analysis section.