Three more early adopters for Lorenzo

Kettering General Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has confirmed it will be the next acute site to implement Lorenzo.

The trust told E-Health Insider that it had become an early adopter site for the iSoft patient administration system, as part of the National Programme for IT in the NHS.

In addition to Kettering, E-Health Insider has also learned that a primary care trust and a mental health services trust will be next adopters of Lorenzo regional care.

NHS Bury’s Informatics Plan says NHS Bury and Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust will move from iSoft’s iPM to Lorenzo Regional Care. The plan also says that Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust will implement Lorenzo.

The primary care trust and a mental health services trust have also committed to deploying Lorenzo, which is currently being used on a limited scale by two acute trusts and one PCT.

However, a spokesperson for that trust told EHI: “Despite remaining committed to the vision and aims of the National Programme for IT, Pennine Acute is not an early adopter of Lorenzo Regional Care.”

Both of the confirmed sites in the NHS Bury Informatics Plan aim to deploy Lorenzo Regional Care by November, leading to speculation that they may be the sites that Christine Connelly was referring to when she announced new deadlines for deploying ‘strategic’ electronic patient record systems to the NHS.

At Healthcare Computing 2009, the director general of informatics said Lorenzo must be implemented in any care-setting by November and “running smoothly” across one acute trust by March next year.

However, a spokesperson for CSC would not confirm that these were the sites working to her deadline. They said: “We are currently working with NHS Connecting for Health and the trusts to agree sequence and timing of the projects to meet objectives agreed with the NHS.”

The informatics plan shows that NHS Bury and Pennine Care intend to implement Lorenzo to fulfil the ‘Clinical 5’ requirements outlined in the Health Informatics Review published last year.

A chart shows a strategy of implementing patient administration systems, order communications and diagnostics reporting, letters with coding, scheduling and e-prescribing through various releases of Lorenzo, beginning now and continuing over the next two to three years.

A statement provided by Barbara Hoyle, ICT director at Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust, said: “The trust is currently undertaking a project which will replace the existing iPM application with CSC Alliance Lorenzo Regional Care.

“The trust has agreed to participate in the early adopter phase of deployment of Release 1.9. The trust will deploy Lorenzo Regional Care across all its inpatient, outpatient and community services in November 2009.”

NHS Bury told E-Health Insider that it was also committed to the full deployment of Lorenzo Regional Care.

Carol Woods, senior responsible officer for Lorenzo Regional Care said: “In order to facilitate improved information sharing across services, the trust is working to replace its current patient administration system, iPM, with Lorenzo Care Management.

“We are looking to deploy the system to all staff that use iPM in November 2009. We have been working closely with clinical and administrative staff from every service to understand their requirements and we have agreed with them how the system will be used once it has been deployed.

“We are looking forward to the benefits Lorenzo Regional Care will bring, including allowing clinical information to be shared appropriately and securely between health care professionals to build a better picture of the patients care.”

Last month, Alan Spours, chief information officer at NHS North West Strategic Health Authority, told the Harrogate conference that he would like to see release 1 of Lorenzo rolled out more extensively.

He said: “We also want to see release 1.9 live in two sites by the end of the year. The early adopters are working to develop Lorenzo 1.9; who will be ahead in November we don’t know yet.”

He also said that Lorenzo 1.9 is “much more than a PAS” and is an “added value system” It links to picture archiving and has the ability to include voice recognition.

Related: Connelly sets a November deadline for suppliers

Link: NHS Bury Informatics Planning 2009-2012