BT completes deals for 25 RiO sites

BT has finalised the contracts for the 25 RiO sites across the South of England that formed part of the extended contract that it signed with NHS Connecting for Health last year.

The £546m deal, which the company signed in June 2009, covered 25 installations of RiO in mental health and community settings.

It also included support for the ‘Live8’ acute trusts that installed Cerner Millennium before Fujitsu left the National Programme for IT in the NHS in 2008, and putting Cerner into four more acute trusts.

Jill de Bene, delivery director for RiO in the South, told E-Health Insider: “There have been a lot of enthusiastic trusts signing up.

"Twenty two were signed in the last quarter of last year. The last three have just come on board, with many of them saying that felt like they had been on starting blocks.”

Fifteen sites have already gone live with the system, which is provided and developed by CSE Healthcare Systems, while the remaining ten sites will go live over the next ten months.

Andy Kinnear, head of Avon IM&T Consortium, who oversaw the deployment of RiO at NHS South Gloucestershire, NHS North Somerset and NHS Bristol simultaneously this spring told E-Health Insider: “Deploying RiO is the first step in a much longer journey.

"I can only equate it to the journey of GPs who started with low level ICT 20 years ago, and who now have mature and developed systems. RiO is already some way along that journey already.”

More than 800 users across the Bristol primary care trusts are now using RiO to provide a single patient record as well as single sign-on, access to the NHS Personal Demographics Service and access to Choose and Book.

The consortium will complete the roll-out to an additional 1,200 users across nursing services by the end of the year.

Kinnear added: “BT had a really positive attitude. They were confident that the product works, following deployment in London, but weren’t over confident.

"They understood that you can’t just drag and drop a product and that Bristol is different to London.”

All of the RiO sites in the south are live with V.5 of the software. However, they will be part of a national upgrade on 23 August, which will see them migrate to V5.4.

De Bene added: “We’re constantly improving the product and there are a couple more releases.

"In release one and two [further releases] there is greater functionality, including high level case records, case load management, reporting, results, ordering of pathology and prescribing. 

"There is also RiO-to-RiO, which will allow one part of a PCT to look in at another part of an organisation with RiO if there is a legitimate reason. It’s very rich functionality.”

Sites live with RiO*:

Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust

Berkshire East Primary Care Trust

Dorset Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust

Hampshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust

Oxfordshire Primary Care Trust

South Gloucestershire Primary Care Trust

North Somerset Primary Care Trust

2gether NHS Foundation Trust

Bristol Primary Care Trust

Berkshire West Primary Care Trust

Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust

Devon Partnership NHS Trust

Portsmouth City Teaching Primary Care Trust (now known as Solent East PCT) (mental health services)

Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust

Milton Keynes Primary Care Trust (PCT) (mental health services)

Sites that will go-live over the next ten months as part of the deal with BT in the South*:  

Ridgeway Partnership (Oxfordshire Learning Disability NHS Trust) 

Cornwall Partnership NHS Trust 

Portsmouth City Teaching Primary Care Trust (community services)

Surrey Primary Care Trust 

Oxford and Buckinghamshire Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust

Buckinghamshire Primary Care Trust

Milton Keynes Primary Care Trust (community services)

Solent West Primary Care Trust

Hampshire Primary Care Trust

Kent and Medway Social Care Partnership NHS Trust

* List supplied by BT. Some organisation names may have changed or be changing to reflect new, national naming conventions or local reorganisations.

Read more about Bristol’s plans for shared records in our opinion and analysis, Bellwether.

Link: CSE Healthcare