Sheffield picks suppliers for portal

Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has announced it will use HP, Orion and Imprivata to create a clinical portal that will give its staff single sign-on access to trust IT systems.

The trust has picked HP Enterprise Services as the primary contractor for the project, with Orion Health providing the portal technology and Imprivata the single sign-on element.

The trust has made a big commitment to investment in IT via a five-year, ‘Transformation Through Technology Programme’.

It announced last October that it would implement CSC’s Lorenzo electronic patient record, in a £33 million project with £13 million of support from Department of Health’s deal with the company to resolve its National Programme for IT contract.

It expected the investment to deliver £70 million of benefits, with £45 million of these cash releasing. This week, the trust said Lorenzo would be up and running in its adult hospitals and community services by the end of 2015.

The business case for the clinical portal aspect of the programme estimated that it would cost £8.5 million over five years, and deliver £60 million of benefits, with £10 million of these cash-releasing.

In making the supplier announcement, the trust said it also expected to have the clinical portal up and running by this autumn.

The trust is also planning to run an electronic document management project, and applied to the second round of the tech fund for this.

In a statement, the trust’s medical director, David Throssell, said the portal would provide a “complete picture of each patient when we are providing their care.”

“This new portal will act as an umbrella across a number of our current computer systems, meaning hospital and community health staff will only have to log-in once to view the different patient information systems, on one screen,” he said.

"It will enable a single, clinical view of every patient and enable more joined up working between acute, community and primay care professionals.

"Many of our staff work outside the hsopital and in the community, so having the right information available is key.

"The clinical portal will enable this to happen, and will mean that staff do not have to keep asking patients the same questions, because once informtion has been inputted into one system it can be viewed via the clinical portal."

Throssell added that a further driver behind the portal aspect of the project was communicating with other healthcare providers.

“The clinical portal will give us the technology to talk to other NHS organisations, sharing information and getting expert advice,” he said. “As the NHS advances, other hospitals which have the same technology will be able to join up with us.

“When a patient is admitted to another NHS organisation, or when they are visited by their GP, we will be able to share vital information with their healthcare provider.”

Colin Henderson, managing director, UK and Ireland, for Orion Health, said it would be implementing its web-based clinical portal, Rhapsody Integration Engine, and Healthcare Pathways products at the trust.

Healthcare Pathways enables organisations to build their own, customised pathways, makes these visibile to clinicans, set tasks and interventions, and enables patient journeys to be tracked.

Henderson said that as a result of the implementation: "Clinicians will have a fuller picture of patients' medical history, and staff will be able to co-ordinate care more effectively", giving patients a "faster journey through the hosptial and community services."