South London lines up for Cerner

South London Healthcare NHS Trust has announced plans to implement Cerner Millennium across all of its hospitals over the next two years.

The installation will be carried out by London local service provider BT in partnership with Cerner, and will build on the installation carried out at Queen Mary’s hospital in Sidcup back in November 2007.

St Mary’s merged with Queen Elizabeth Hospital Woolwich and Princess Royal hospital in Bromley to form South London Healthcare NHS Trust two years ago; and there are now plans to remove its A&E and maternity services and turn it into a non-emergency centre.

The newly announced installation will extend Cerner Millennium to all three of the trust’s sites and replace the existing patient administration systems at Queen Elizabeth and Princess Royal.

In a statement issued by Cerner, the trust’s acting chief operating officer, Jennie Hall, said: “This is a very welcome step for the trust. Our staff have, so far, been working with three different record systems. Installing one for all sites will make everyone’s life much easier.”

Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust is still slated to be the next London institution to take Millennium, with a go-live sometime this year.

David Wilson, vice president and general manager of BT Health said in the statement: “BT has a long-standing relationship with South London and played a key role in installing a new patient administration and electronic patient record system at Queen Mary’s back in 2007.

“We are delighted to help extend the system’s capabilities trust-wide and help continue to deliver better, safer patient care.”

And Alan Fowles, vice president and general manager for Cerner in the UK and Ireland said it was “excited” to be working with the trust on an implementation that would “provide high quality information for manager and clinicians” and so “improve efficiency, increase quality and improve patient outcomes.”

EHealth Insider asked for further details of the implementation, including the methodology to be used, and the likely sequencing of the roll-out across the trust, but none of the parties involved were able to supply further information.