King’s swaps i.CM for Allscripts in first phase of go-live

King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has gone live with elements of Allscripts’ Sunrise Clinical Manager at its main hospital in Denmark Hill and at Orpington Hospital.  

King’s went live on 5 August, replacing its existing i.CM electronic patient record. A spokeswoman from the trust told Digital Health News: “We are live with order communications, electronic prescribing and medicines administration, electronic discharge notification.

"We have integrated all of our in-house developed clinical functionality into the user interface."

King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is one of the top ranking trusts in Digital Health Intelligence’s Clinical Digital Maturity Index.

It was one of the ‘iSoft 7’ trusts in London and the South that decided to stick with their iSoft systems when the National Programme for IT in the NHS was introduced. It has gone on to become one of just five trusts at the top of the CDMI by adding systems over a number of years, including many in-house applications.

It is particularly well-known for its early and extensive deployment of e-prescribing. However, when the trust picked Allscripts, in December 2015, its then-director of ICT, Colin Sweeney, who has since retired, said it had decided it needed a new approach to further development.

Despite this, Sweeney pointed out that the old iSoft systems and the new Allscripts system have the same code base at heart, thanks to a series of company splits and acquisitions, which made the move easier.

Sweeney said: “In some ways we are looking at it as an upgrade of what we have because the core system Allscripts has is the same system as i.CM is so the migration path will be a lot easier for us.” The trust has retained its i.PM patient administration system, which is now supplied by CSC.

The trust is following a phased implementation for its new system, and confirmed that the aim is roll-out across a third site, the Princess Royal University Hospital, by the end of this year.

King’s is one of London's largest and busiest teaching hospitals, and the trust is one of the country's leading NHS foundation trusts.

Its spokeswoman also said that the reason behind rolling out Allscripts was “to ensure the care we provide to our patients is as streamlined as possible, and more consistent across all our sites.”