Final three take Lorenzo deal

Three trusts have been granted central funding to deploy Lorenzo as an electronic patient record system, as part of the deal agreed between the Department of Health and CSC in 2012.

The Health and Social Care Information Centre confirmed to Digital Health News that Mid Essex Hospital Services, East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust and Papworth Hospital NHS Foundation Trust have all been given approval to take the system.

The HSCIC did not say how much funding the trusts would receive, but the maximum on offer to the other 12 trusts that taken the deal was £3.1 million.

East and North Hertfordshire confirmed it would receive £3.09m over two years. No further trusts can now access the central funding.

Papworth – the UK's largest specialist cardiothoracic hospital – had previously planned to deploy the Epic EPR in a joint eHospital project with Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

But last year Digital Health News revealed Papworth had pulled out of the arrangement, with board members concerned that it did not represent value for money.

Instead it went to tender for a ten-year contract for full suite of systems worth up to £20 million.

Papworth currently has an iSoft/CSC patient administration system, acquired during the era of the National Programme for IT.

Mid Essex is an acute trust that services about 380,000 people in Chelmsford, Maldon and Braintree. Board papers from March this year show the trust intends to go-live with a new EPR, which has now been confirmed as Lorenzo, in May 2017.

East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust – an acute trust that serves about 600,000 people – has also confirmed in board papers its intention to deploy Lorenzo as an EPR. It is also planning to go-live in May next year.

Responding to questions from Digital Health News, East and North Hertfordshire said: “Lorenzo represented the best value and timely solution for the trust to replace its current system”. 

A CSC spokesman said the new planned deployments were further evidence that Lorenzo “was earning its place as a leading EPR”.

“We’re committed to working with all our Lorenzo customers to help them use technology to deliver better, safer care.”

Lorenzo was developed by iSoft for the National Programme for IT for deployment across the North, Midlands and East of England, where CSC became the sole local service provider after Accenture dropped out in 2006.

However, the system ran into development delays and was only deployed in a handful of trusts. CSC, which eventually bought iSoft, did a deal with the DH in 2012 that removed its right to exclusively provide systems to the NME, but which made funding available for trusts that still wanted Lorenzo.

With the offer closing on 7 July, when the national programme’s contracts came to an end, 15 trusts have received funding under the deal, 11 of which have already deployed Lorenzo, either as an EPR or a PAS.

CSC has also succeeded in deploying Lorenzo outside the NME, and has launched it in Australia and New Zealand.

What to know more about the Lorenzo deployments in the North, Midlands and East? Read our feature about the experiences of the trusts that deployed it under the 2012 deal and the legacy of the NME here.