Royal Brompton goes live with Lorenzo

Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Foundation Trust has gone-live with a Lorenzo patient administration system, jettisoning its old green screen system in the process.

Chief information officer Joanna Smith told Digital Health News migration at the London trust had begun last Friday afternoon, with all inpatient records successfully migrated to the new system.

“I’ve got pretty high standards, but the general consensus is that it’s gone pretty well," she said. There had been minor issues with deployment, such as a few PCs having conflicting software and people not having their smart cards, but no “Oh my God” incidents, she added.

The migration of outpatient records ran into some issues, with 75 % transferring to Lorenzo. The rest would be migrated through additional automatic and manual loads, but would not impact patient care, she said. “You can’t automate everything from a 20-year-old system.”

Already the new Lorenzo PAS is proving a better tool than the trust's previous, legacy CSC system, with clinicians inputting more information. “You can’t put a wristband on a patient without admitting them in the system now. So instead of avoiding it they [the staff] are embracing it.”

Unlike the old PAS, the new Lorenzo installation is also connected to the NHS Spine. Royal Brompton is one of the few trust to adopt Lorenzo outside the National Programme for IT in North, Midlands and East and the subsequent 2012 agreement between CSC and the Department of Health.

Lorenzo was selected in late 2014 after a competitive tender, but the trust decided not to deploy the system as a full electronic patient record. Smith said a new EPR would be needed eventually to replace a legacy Graphnet EPR, but the trust was taking a cautious approach to upgrading its systems.

Lorenzo is a likely frontrunner to fill this role, as the trust was given full licensing rights when it selected the CSC product as its PAS. “We are in a good position to say the the default is, ‘why not Lorenzo?’" Smith acknowledged.

Switching PAS is just one of a flurry of changes at the trust, that is moving from “pretty old systems” and a lot of paper, to a more digital focus.

In June, the trust completed the deployment of CSC e-prescribing and medicine administration product MedChart. In August, Kainos’ electronic document management system Evolve will fully go-live at the trust, replacing the paper records of more than 250,000 patients.

In the past few years the trust has also upgraded its core network, set up a wireless network so clinicians can access information as they move around the hospital, and upgraded its PCs.

Smith said this meant staff were having to work out new ways of working, which could be challenging, but of huge benefit to both the trust and patients. “We have been playing a cautious game and it seems to be working out as we hoped.”

A CSC spokesperson said: "We've worked closely with Royal Brompton and Harefield to achieve a successful go-live. It's great to see another trust choosing Lorenzo."

Want to read more about Lorenzo, CSC and the National Programme for IT? Read our July feature here.