UCLH and CGI commercialise portal

University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has signed a commercialisation agreement with CGI to offer its e-CareLogic system to other NHS trusts.

In 2003, the trust announced it was investing £70m in an EPR system from IDX Systems in partnership with Logica, as CGI was then known.

The e-CareLogic system has been developed by CGI and the trust’s clinicians over the intervening ten years, to allow access to disparate and legacy systems through a portal.

The commercialisation agreement will allow the company to offer the system to other organisations in collaboration with the trust, while it invests more money in the system and develops applications for mobile access.

James Thomas, the trust’s IT director, said its clinical staff have been able to spend more time with their patients and enhance patient safety as a result of delivering the EPR with the company.

Calum Macleod, CGI’s vice president of healthcare in the UK, told EHI the deal would benefit both parties.

“We do something to allow them to progress in a better way, they support us in how we publicise this, and it gives people confidence around the solution.”

Macleod said there are “very few” similar, commercial partnerships within the NHS, but he believes they are a good way for companies to collaborate with trusts.

“What I like about this approach is that it’s small enough to be able to get your hands around it and do something well.”

While the system is based on a portal, Macleod said the company and trust have built other modules over time for order communications and workflows.

He said CGI is also rolling out a workflow application across University College London Hopsitals for mobile devices, to allow clinicians to more easily track their patients’ locations within a ward.

“Some hospitals can have patients all across the floors, so for some it was a voyage of discovery as to where there patients were.”

While the trust is due to re-let its EPR contract in the next 18 months, Macleod said CGI is still helping it significantly, including assistance with an e-prescribing project and selecting a vendor neutral archive partner.

Macleod said the company is about to sign a contract for e-CareLogic with a new trust, and is in discussions with several others.