NME trust plans i.PM wrap and replace

Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust has issued a tender for an electronic patient record that can integrate with its existing systems.

An OJEU notice issued by the trust says it is looking to sign a ten-year contract with an option for a further five years and annual renewals. The total value is around £16.5 million.

Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals is looking to roll-out the EPR in two stages, the first of which will focus on wrapping the EPR around its existing patient administration, CSC’s i.PM, which was installed as part of the National Programme for IT.

The plan is to have this clinical wrap implemented by October 2017, so it can be used for accident and emergency, order communications and diagnostic reporting, clinical correspondence, theatres management, advance clinical decision support and electronic document management.

The trust also wants the wrap to provide e-prescribing and medicines administration, with integration to the trust’s existing pharmacy stock control system, which is provided by JAC. Non-core requirements include bed management and a patient portal.

Trusts in the North, Midlands and East of England were due to receive the Lorenzo EPR as part of the national programme. When this was hit by development and deployment delays, CSC often deployed older iSoft systems to them as ‘interim’ solutions.

Trusts in this position must be off their national contracts by 7 July next year; although the Health and Social Care Information Centre is expecting some 60% of installations to remain in place after this date.

Despite this, suppliers are hoping that trusts will look again at their requirements over the longer term. The Sandwell and West Birmingham tender goes on to describe an optional second phase for its project, that would see it replace i.PM with its new clinical supplier’s product.

The trust additionally wants the option to procure further EPR functionality during the timeframe of the contract, including a maternity system, an ophthalmology system to support the specialist Birmingham Midlands Eye Centre, a cardiology system and other specialist departmental functions.

The OJEU notice also reflects the interoperability agenda of the NHS in England by stressing that any solution will have to work with the trust’s other installed systems – SystmOne, Badgernet and MediSoft – and local GP systems, which are mainly EMIS and SystmOne.

“As an integrated care organisation, the integration and interoperability of systems is vital to the efficient and effective operation of the trust both internally and with the local health economy,” says the notice.