South Warwickshire live with Lorenzo

South Warwickshire NHS Foundation Trust has gone live with CSC’s Lorenzo electronic patient record system in the first phase of its ‘Project 2020’ IT strategy.

The trust went live with a patient administration system and modules for A&E, clinical documentation, day care and emergency care, covering its acute and community services.

Danny Roberts, the trust’s chief technology officer, told EHI News the go-live was the culmination of a year’s work after the Lorenzo business case received final approval in February last year.

“It’s been a great weekend, we’ve had really good teamwork across the board – there have been a few bits and pieces that have come out as you’d expect, but it’s pretty much gone to plan throughout.”

Roberts said the trust’s implementation of Lorenzo is part of its ‘Project 2020’ strategy to have entirely paperless health records by 2020.

“Lorenzo is the system that the trust has been waiting on for a number of years while it went through the process of maturing, and after conducting a review and seeing all the options, we felt it was the best.”

The implementation of the PAS and other non-clinical modules was part of the trust’s “quite pragmatic” approach to introducing the system, he said.

“It’s not the glamorous phase, but it’s the foundation phase which needs to be done, and then we can look forward to results requesting and an integrated solution where you can access all the information.”

Roberts said the lack of clinical functionality in the first phase of the go-live was a challenge when trying to secure support for the system from clinicians.

“It’s a difficult message to say that we’re going live with Lorenzo, but it hasn’t got significant clinical content for another year, so it was a challenge to get that engagement right.”

The second phase of the Lorenzo implementation, taking place next year, will include results requesting, e-prescribing and static care plans.

Roberts said the trust’s immediate focus is on completing the deployment verification period, and working on system optimisation to expand the use of Lorenzo in A&E and for clinical documentation.

In May 2013, South Warwickshire first indicated its plans to take Lorenzo under the interim agreement signed between the Department of Health and CSC, which gave trusts central funding for deployment and service costs.

CSC was the local service provider for the NME as part of the National Programme for IT. As such, it was contracted to deliver iSoft’s Lorenzo to healthcare economies across three-fifths of the NHS.

However, the development and deployment of Lorenzo was severely delayed.

The interim agreement was signed after the government announced that it was scrapping NPfIT, so that trusts that still wanted the system could access it.