Integrated health IT system planned

Rotherham Doncaster and South Humber NHS Foundation Trust is considering moving to an integrated system to cover both its community and mental health services.

The trust uses Silverlink in mental health and TPP’s SystmOne in community services. The latter was acquired as part of the National Programme for IT under a national contract that ends in July 2016.

Speaking to Digital Health News, Richard Banks, executive director of business assurance, suggested the trust is now looking to use the end of the SystmOne contract next year as a trigger to consider its options for an integrated solution.

“With the national contract coming to an end this is an opportunity to pause and look a little bit on the horizon and ask if there is a single system out there that would do what our current two systems do and do it better. If not, then two systems together in an integrated way that could provide better than what we currently have.”

The trust’s 'Clinical Systems Review', published in recent board papers, gives some detail on why the trust might want to move to a single system. 

“At the moment, our two clinical systems – Silverlink [mental health] and SystmOne [community] – operate in silos and this has an implication for the realisation of [the trust's] strategic vision. They are not integrated, are not interoperable and the support for agile working is patchy.”

Banks added to the list of constraints: “Clinicians need to log on to two disparate systems and they don’t necessarily have comprehensive patient records available in one place at one time.”

There is also “added complexity” in terms of producing reports. The review goes on to say the preferred solution is a hybrid of best of breed model and an integrated EPR system.

The trust has already completed an ‘early assessment’ of several systems, including Servelec’s RiO, CSC’s Lorenzo, Advanced Health and Care’s CareNotes and both existing systems.

Banks said this was “an informal evaluation to say to our staff: 'Look this is an example of some of the systems out there that are different to those we already have' to try get some sort of clinical perspective on: 'Do these systems feel intuitive?'"

He added there were no frontrunners and the trust is still to go to final procurement. “We are putting out as detailed a specification as we can and looking for system suppliers to come back and say whether they believe their systems can achieve what we want within one single system.

“Or we may find that systems out there will perhaps do 80-90% of what we need and we may need those bolt-ons and integrated extras.”

To support its review the trust is using consultancy firm Channel 3, while Banks also suggested the trust may use the NHS Shared Business Services framework during procurement. “At the moment the SBS framework would seem to be the preferred option for us.”

The Clinical Systems Review says that procurement is meant to be completed in November 2015 and that programme implementation should begin in January next year.