Barts sticks with Millennium

Barts Health NHS Trust will stick with Cerner’s Millennium electronic patient record system beyond the end of its national contract in October 2015.

Barts Health is the first trust in London or the South that received Millennium via the National Programme for IT to announce a preferred supplier to take over when the national contract expires.

It is a member of a consortium of seven London trusts (formerly nine) that went out to tender for a patient administration system/EPR, a clinical portal and hosting services in February 2012.

EHI reported in March that the three companies shortlisted to provide Lot 1 of the contract – the PAS/EPR – were Cerner, Epic and InterSystems.

Barts Health has done a ‘call-off process’ to outline trust requirements and selected Cerner as its EPR supplier. It will next select a hosting partner to support Millennium.

Barts health was formed in April 2012 with the merger of Whipps Cross University Hospital NHS Trust, Barts and The London NHS Trust and Newham University Hospital NHS Trust.

Before moving ahead with Millennium as its single system EPR, Whipps Cross University Hospital will be moved on to the system under an NPfIT contract.

Whipps Cross will have the system delivered by BT under the national contract – now held by the Health and Social Care Information Centre – with Barts Health.

The 670-bed hospital, which runs a legacy McKesson patient administration system, TotalCare, will have the Cerner PAS and clinical functionality deployed across the trust

Barts and the London, which received Millennium under NPfIT in 2008, and Newham Hospital, which procured Millennium outside of the national programme in 2005, will have their services upgraded.

Cerner’s PowerTrials, Power Insight Enterprise Data Warehouse and RadNet will be deployed across all Barts Health sites.

Newham University Hospital and their community services at Tower Hamlets will also move to remote hosting in Cerner’s data centre.

The business case for the merger of the trusts said the three were, “facing challenges related to delivering the platform for an electronic patient record”.

“Over time the planned improvements to information systems and technology will be a key enabler for delivering streamlined care,” it says.

It added that the costs of a new system for the merged trust would, “almost certainly be significantly cheaper than buying three individual systems”.

Cerner vice president and managing director Emil Peters said the project at Whipps Cross would expand on successful work already underway at Barts Health.

“This is a long-term partnership that will ensure patients continue to benefit from the very best technology,” he said.

Barts Health chief information officer Luke Readman said: “Implementing a single system across Barts Health will allow us to deliver real clinical and patient benefits and we look forward to working with our partners at Cerner, HSCIC and BT to make this a reality.”

Read more about Barts’ use of Cerner in Insight.