North Staffs buys Oasis e-prescribing

University Hospital of North Staffordshire NHS Trust has awarded a contract to Oasis Medical Solutions for its e-prescribing system.

Oasis collaborates with Italian healthcare company NoemaLife to use its Galileo medication system. The £1.74m contract will see North Staffordshire become the second trust to take advantage of the partnership.

Sue Thomson, the trust’s clinical director of pharmacy and accountable officer for controlled drugs, said the trust hoped this will remove the need for paper drug charts.

“E-prescribing enhances accuracy, visibility and consistency when prescribing medication. We’re confident the new system will benefit all aspects of the trust,” she said.

“For instance, shorter drug rounds and streamlined prescription administrative processes allow staff to focus more on care, which means a better experience for patients and timely discharge after treatment. Money saved on drug spend can be reinvested elsewhere in the organisation.”

The system will flag up patient allergies and incompatible medications, avoiding the wrong drugs being prescribed. It also includes time prompts, which inform the relevant staff when drug doses are due.

It will give staff full access to the patient’s electronic record, to ensure the right medication is prescribed to the right patient.

Worcester Acute Hospital NHS Trust has already deployed the system under the collaboration between the two companies. Thomson said she had been impressed by what the trust has achieved.

The companies first announced their partnership in 2011. The Oasis and Galieo products are built on the same database technology and use the same programming language.

Robyn Tolley, managing director of Noemalife UK said this means the system is very flexible so trusts can easily make specific modifications to suit them.

“E-prescribing solutions are the future of healthcare and every hospital will ultimately be required to have them,” he said.