InterSystems on Trak in Scotland

InterSystems has implemented its TrakCare product in five Scottish NHS boards, with clinical functionality due to start rolling out from November.

InterSystems signed the contract for a national patient management system for Scotland in January 2010. It covers five boards: NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, NHS Lanarkshire, NHS Ayrshire and Arran, NHS Borders and NHS Grampian.

InterSystems UK and Ireland country manager Jonathan Selby said NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde alone is the largest health economy in Western Europe, so the scope of the programme is massive.

He said part of the system was live at all five boards within 20 months of the contract being signed, with NHS Glasgow and Clyde the last to go-live in September last year.

Every board has implemented the hospital patient administration system, while NHS Grampian has chosen to deploy the PAS in mental health.

Order communications will start rolling out from November and all core functionality will be deployed by the end of 2013.

“Overall, across the programme, I’m pleased to say we are on track and on budget; but it would be wrong to say there haven’t been lessons learnt in that process,” said Selby. “It’s been a big programme for us in terms of getting up to speed, recruiting staff and training staff.”

Optional modules the boards can take include A&E, community, pharmacy management, maternity, radiology and theatres. InterSystems recently won another national contract to implement its TrakCare Lab system across Wales.

Selby believed the successful implementation in Scotland put InterSystems in a strong position to also win contracts in England.

“The English market had been closed to us under the national programme so we are fortunate that the opportunities in Scotland and Wales came up,” he said. “Now we’re looking very seriously at opportunities down South and we’re hopeful to win some new contracts.”

Read more about the programme, and TrakCare’s implementation in Lanarkshire and Ayrshire and Arran in Insight.