Cerner launches cloud EPR for NHS trusts

Cerner has launched a software as a service option for its Millennium electronic patient record system, targeted at smaller trusts who lack the capital for a full deployment.

The Cerner SaaS is the first “comprehensive” subscription-based EPR available to NHS acute trusts, according to the company.

Under the model, trusts who take a subscription will receive the core elements of the EPR, including the patient administration system and modules for A&E, order communications, nursing and clinical documentation, medicines management, and a data warehouse reporting solution.

Cerner says the model is intended “exclusively” for trusts with fewer than 500 beds, and will be a fully-hosted service with a shared domain using a UK data centre.

The SaaS option will be fully managed by Cerner, including management of the applications themselves, while the standard Millennium system allows trusts to undertake more of the application management in-house.

Emil Peters, Cerner’s vice president and managing director, told EHI the launch of the SaaS version is intended to provide a “competitively priced” option for trusts that cannot afford the standard Millennium system.

“Trusts are under immense financial pressure but they’re still trying to meet some pretty aggressive targets, and it shouldn’t be just the large trusts who can give their clinicians access to these systems.”

Peters said Cerner has experience with deploying a similar shared model at over 70 hospitals in the US.

The company will offer full implementation to trusts, based on a 12-month deployment, as part of the SaaS package.

The SaaS model will provide smaller trusts with the benefits of an integrated system without a large budget and help them to meet the goal of a paperless NHS by 2018, he said.

“The problem is that there’s not a road map for them at the moment, and I think this at least helps to provide some sort of road map.”

Peters said Cerner has no specific market share target, but believes there will be a lot of interest from smaller trusts.

“There are only a few 800-pound gorillas out there, and a lot of other trusts who can benefit from this.”

He said the company is speaking to trusts about the challenges they are facing to determine whether the SaaS option is right for them.

“We will work on a trust-by-trust basis, on a ground-up build we’ll do specifically for them.

“They need to know what the cost-benefit is of going either way: do they want their own domain, and that might depend on how many sub-specialties they have, will they be taking on other trusts, other infrastructure?”

Peters said the SaaS option is not suitable for trusts that already have Millennium, as they have unique configurations for their modules that cannot be combined in a shared domain.

Trusts who take the SaaS option will also be encouraged to deploy further modules, including critical care and healthcare information exchange, to add further clinical functionality once they have “bedded in” the core modules.

Cerner’s Millennium EPR has been deployed at more than 20 NHS acute trusts.

All six London trusts that deployed Millennium during the National Programme for IT look set to stick with it.