Derby latest Lorenzo trust to go-live

Derby Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has gone live with its Lorenzo electronic patient record system from CSC.

The trust, which went live with Lorenzo yesterday, is the third to deploy the EPR under a revised agreement between the company and the Department of Health, signed in September 2013.

A spokesman from CSC told EHI the go-live has well so far.

"As planned, Derby Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust went live with CSC’s Lorenzo electronic patient record system on 24 February 2014,” he said. 

Derby Hospitals added that it could confirm that it had "gone live with Lorenzo across all areas of the trust" and is now using the system "to manage inpatient and outpatient activity across all wards and outpatient areas." 

Derby Hospitals announced its intention to take the EPR in January last year as a replacement for its McKesson TotalCare patient administration system, for which a support contract put in place by the Department of Health expires next month.

It originally planned to go live with its new EPR in November last year, but decided to push back the deployment date because of the complexity of migrating trust data and concerns about staff support.

However, a trust board paper from January this year, notes that staff engagement has since reached an “impressive level.”

Lee Outhwaite, the trust's director of finance, added today: "Ahead of this weekend’s go-live, the joint Derby-CSC team worked extensively together to train users and migrate data.

"We are now focusing on supporting users across the trust to ensure a smooth switchover.

"Derby is already an experienced user of CSC’s solutions and we looking forward to working together to use Lorenzo to enhance clinical functionality across our organisation."

As part of the National Programme for IT, CSC was contracted to deliver Lorenzo to the whole of the North, Midlands and East, but the development and deployment of the system went more slowly than planned.

The revised deal with the DH removed the company’s exclusive right to supply systems to the region, but offered trusts that still want to take Lorenzo central funding for deployment and service costs.

So far, eight trusts have confirmed they intend to take the Lorenzo EPR as part of the agreement. The next trust to go live is Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust, which plans to deploy the system on 2 March. 

According to the EHI Intelligence Database, Derby is already using CSC software for its order communications, pathology, theatre systems, A&E, inpatient e-prescribing and clinical noting.

"Derby is a long-term user of CSC's healthcare software products,” said the CSC spokesman.

“The adoption of Lorenzo is part of a programme to use modern technology to positively impact patient care, and we are pleased the trust has chosen a CSC product as the foundation of its IT system."