Barnsley Hospital ditches Lorenzo for System C’s electronic patient record

Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has gone live with an electronic patient record powered by System C – replacing its contract with DXC Lorenzo.

The trust is the first to migrate away from Lorenzo, which was the chosen service provider for the North, Midlands and East of England under the National Programme for IT.

System C’s CareFlow system, which went live in July, includes patient administration, maternity, theatres, emergency department, clinical noting, care plans, care-co-ordination, alerting, referrals, and e-observation systems.

According to Digital Health Intelligence data the trust signed a deal for an electronic patient record (EPR) with DXC Lorenzo in October 2014. The contract was due to expire in October 2020.

Tom Davidson, ICT director at Barnsley Hospital, said: “The challenges presented by the pandemic have spurred adoption of digital systems right across the healthcare sector, and we felt it was an excellent opportunity to build on that momentum.

“Initially, our project had a planned April go-live but it was put on hold while our ICT and project teams were in the thick of providing support for the trust’s response to Covid-19.

“Once we were settled into a new way of working, we were able to reassure the senior team at the Trust that we were able to proceed, safely, and the time was right, so we rescheduled our go-live for early July.”

Claire Grant, chief nursing information officer at the trust, added: “The whole ethos behind its development was to make each care plan truly bespoke to each patient, therefore ensuring maximum patient safety in terms of the nursing care delivered, while maintaining gold standard documentation.

“We are fiercely proud of the resulting product and our nurses find the system intuitive and easy to use.  Although it is early days, we are already seeing the documentation/safety tool compliance benefits.”

Barnsley signed with System C in 2018, just three and a half years after deploying DXC ‘s Lorenzo EPR. The deployment created a significant shake-up at the trust, with then-CEO Diane Wake commenting at the time that the implementation had “not been completely painless”.

It was approved under the tail-end of NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT), under which DXC – then CSC – was the local service provider for the North, Midlands and East of England.

The first nine trusts to take Lorenzo under the agreement were supported by an incentive fund from CSC up to a value of £1 million per trust.

The latest is the first time a Lorenzo system has been switched to System C’s CareFlow, meaning the provider had to adapt its methodology to meet specific characteristics of Lorenzo in areas such as data migration, reporting, interfacing and workflow.

Ian Denley, joint chief executive of System C, said: “There is a lot to do when replacing a system like Lorenzo for the first time, as we have to modify our deployment tools and processes and fill functional gaps.

“It was made all the more difficult because of the conditions presented by Covid-19.  I am delighted how well the deployment has gone and would like to thank the Trust teams for their excellent performance.”

The system update also integrates System C’s theatre offering Bluespier, which was already in use at the trust, allowing for theatre scheduling.

Barnsley isn’t the only trust migrating away from DXC Lorenzo.

Sheffield Teaching Hospitals has issued a £400m tender for an EPR to replace its current contract with DXC Lorenzo five years after it was installed. Digital Health Intelligence data shows the trust’s DXC Lorenzo EPR was installed in 2015 for a period of ten years up to December 2025.

The trust is now looking for three suppliers to submit bids with a “comprehensive range of clinical and administrative” functions, according to the tender notice.