Royal Free signs with Cerner

Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust has signed with Cerner to supply its electronic patient record system, application management and hosting services beyond the end of the trust’s national contract.

EHI revealed last month that the trust had picked Cerner as its preferred supplier and understands that all six London trusts that received the Millennium EPR from BT under the National Programme for IT are planning to stick with the system.

The Royal Free was the first of the London trusts to go-live with Millennium under NPfIT in 2008 and has championed the early adoption of Cerner’s MPages, which gives clinicians customisable views of real-time data.

The trust also uses Millennium on tablet computers, allowing nurses to record patient observations from the bedside.

The new ten-year contract includes the addition of remote hosting and application management services, which Cerner says will help to improve operational efficiency and reliability for staff using the system.

Will Smart, Royal Free’s director of IM&T, said: “we’re proud of what we’ve already achieved with Cerner, consistently being amongst the first hospitals to adopt new technology that can improve outcomes and help our staff.

“We’re excited about continuing that and are ambitious about what we can achieve. We looked carefully at the different systems available, but feel confident that this deal is the right one for our staff and patients.”

Emil Peters, Cerner vice president and managing director, described the trust’s decision as a “fantastic endorsement of what we’ve already achieved as well as our plans for the future”.

Royal Free is a member of a consortium of six London trusts (formerly nine) that went out to tender for a patient administration system/EPR, a clinical portal and hosting services in February 2012. The London framework lists Cerner, Epic and InterSystems as potential EPR suppliers.

Barts Health NHS Trust and St George’s Healthcare NHS Trust have already confirmed they plan to stick with Millennium beyond the end of their national contracts, while Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, Kingston Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Croydon Health Services NHS Trust are yet to announce their decisions.