Lorenzo “not yet stable” says Connelly

Department of Health director general of informatics Christine Connelly has said that Lorenzo Release 1.9 is not yet stable at University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust, the first site to which it was deployed six months ago.

In an exclusive interview with E-Health Insider, Connelly said the latest version of the electronic patient record software, bought by the Department of Health for trusts in the North, Midlands and East of England, is not yet stable or ready for wider deployment by local service provider CSC.

In October, EHI reported that the lead clinician at Morecambe Bay had said the software wasn’t ready at launch.

In September, EHI reported that Morecambe Bay had launched a stabilisation plan to try and bring under control a host of problems with its Lorenzo EPR.

Updating the situation, following the October go-live of Lorenzo at Birmingham Women’s Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Connelly, said: “In terms of NME we continue to be focused on ensuring that release version 1.9 of Lorenzo has been stabilised, and once that has been achieved we can move to wider roll out.”

Birmingham Women’s became the third to go live in October and is now due to be followed by Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust, the first mental health trust to take Lorenzo release 1.9, in 2011.

However, in her interview Connelly says there is a lot of work to do at Morecambe Bay. “No the product is not yet stable. We are cautiously optimistic about Birmingham Women’s, but we’ve still not yet stabilised Morecambe Bay.”

Connelly confirms that Lorenzo 1.9 must to be installed in four different sites for a release key milestone to be signed off and the way opened for further deployments, which she suggests could potentially occur simultaneously.

“Once we get to that point we’ll be able to do many implementations in parallel,” says Connelly. “Until the product is stable you can’t do that.”