iSoft says it is ‘on track’ at Morecambe

Australian health IT firm iSoft yesterday said it was “on track” to implement Lorenzo across University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust by the end of March.

In a statement to the Australian Stock Exchange, the company said it would meet its promised revenues and added: “ISoft remains on track for the ‘go-live’ of Lorenzo Regional Healthcare Release 1.9 at Morecambe Bay in accordance with the agreed schedule, contrary to recent speculation in media reports.”

Last week, E-Health Insider reported that local service provider CSC and iSoft look set to miss the 31 March deadline for the go-live across the trust.

This will be the first acute trust implementation of the version of Lorenzo that includes patient administration and some clinical functionality. Morecambe Bay gave Lorenzo Release 1.0 a ‘soft landing’ or initial, limited go-live fifteen months ago.

Since last week, EHI has since learned the projected go-live has slipped to 2 April, but with a contractual “acceptance” now pencilled in for 31 March to enable the March deadline to be claimed. But even this April date may be missed.

Sources close to the project say that for all the hard hands-on work by staff and suppliers at the trust, a meaningful go-live will not come until later this year, and possibly much later.

The delays come despite huge investment of resources and the trust having a large and highly regarded IT department.

An indication of the slow pace of progress is provided by the fact that while the first couple of wards went live with Lorenzo R1.0 at Furness General Hospital in November 2008, 12 months later the system had still not gone live at Lancaster Royal Infirmary.

However, the trust stressed that it had decided to focus on deploying Lorenzo to more wards at Furness General instead of extending it to the second hospital.

The successful go-live of Lorenzo at Morecambe Bay is crucial for both iSoft and its partner CSC.

In April 2009, Department of Health chief information officer Christine Connelly set the end of March as an absolutely hard deadline for the two suppliers to deliver, as part of her demand for ‘significant progress’ with ‘strategic’ electronic patient record systems in the acute sector.

CSC is currently enmeshed in contract renegotiations with the DH that include finding hundreds of millions of savings and which hinge on a clear success at Morecambe Bay.

The go-live is also a critical contractual milestone, a point spelled out by iSoft in its ASX statement yesterday: “ISoft expects the milestone at Morecambe Bay to be met according to the timetable agreed between its partner Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) and the NHS, and expects this achievement to trigger a cash payment to the company.”

ISoft went on to say that it is currently renegotiating its deal with CSC, and is confident of hitting revenue targets for the second half of the year.

“The company is currently negotiating a revised agreement with CSC that is expected to underpin the second half of fiscal 2010 and lead to benefits in 2011 and beyond.

"The revised agreement, which is on track to be concluded in the coming weeks, will reshape the way iSoft and CSC jointly market iSoft and CSC-related solutions in England to build a stronger market presence for Lorenzo.”

Connelly set her deadline after the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee called for the National Programme for IT in the NHS to be given another six months to deliver in January 2009. She gave the programme a further 11 months.

The central thrust of the PAC’s second report was that strategic EPRs were late and getting later.

“Given the continuing delays and history of missed deadlines, there must be grounds for serious concern as to whether Lorenzo can be deployed in a reasonable timescale and in a form that brings demonstrable benefits to users and patients,” it said.