Royal Derby Hospital deploys DXC Technology’s ePMA system

Royal Derby Hospital has deployed an electronic prescribing and medicines administration (ePMA) system from DXC Technology.

The aim was to alert doctors to genuine prescribing dangers and forms part of a wider electronic patient record programme.

Deployment of the ePMA component of DXC’s EPR, Lorenzo, has already started at the Derbyshire Children’s Hospital and will extend to all inpatient areas in Derby, replacing an outdated electronic prescribing system.

Debbie Loke, deputy CIO at the University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust, said: “Enabling safer, faster and more informed prescribing for busy doctors and nurses and the patients they look after is a core ambition in our transition to Lorenzo ePMA.

“Unlike most hospitals embarking on digitisation programmes with the Lorenzo EPR, electronic prescribing is not new for us.

“However, staff will benefit from a much more intuitive, mature and connected system, configured around their workflow. This will better guide their decisions and alert them to real risks.”

The new ePMA system will sit alongside several specialist prescribing systems used in areas such as oncology and critical care. It will integrate with crucial patient information held in the trust’s EPR, facilitating suggestions and alerts based on an individual patient’s circumstances.

Going live with an ePMA system isn’t the only news to come from Derby.

The University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust was formed by a merger of Derby Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Burton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in July 2018.

Loke recently spoke to Digital Health News about how the trust merged the EPRs from the former hospital trusts.

She explained how the newly formed trust was able to link up Derby’s Lorenzo EPR system and Burton’s Meditech one which meant each EPR system can now “translate patient ID”.

This allows clinicians to view patient information between hospital sites, even though they run on different EPR systems.

A similar project was carried out by West Suffolk Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CUH) in April 2018.