Birmingham Women’s to switch on Lorenzo

Birmingham Women’s is set to become the third ‘early adopter’ go live with the Lorenzo 1.9 care records service hospital information system. The trust took a decision on Friday to proceed with an initial go live by Monday.

The move will see the specialised hospital become the third NHS trust to go live with Lorenzo. Birmingham Women’s follows in the footsteps of University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust and Bury PCT.

The decision to go live was confirmed by Steve Peak, the chief executive for Birmingham Women’s Steve Peak, in an interview with ComputerWorld UK.

The decision was taken just days after the most senior clinician involved in the Lorenzo project at Morecambe Bay said the software was unstable and not ready for deployment.

CSC needs to implement Lorenzo at four different types of NHS trusts, representing a cross-section of the health service, to trigger a key contract milestone, that will trigger payments to it and sub-contractor iSoft. The fourth trust is Pennine Partnership a mental health.

EHI understands that Pennine, which recently delayed go live plans and had begun looking at alternatives, is now intending to go live with Lorenzo in February 2011.

Achieving the milestone is an essential step to enabling CSC to conclude a contract renegotiation with the Department of Health. Negotiations continue on how the supplier will deliver £700m in savings, already announced by the DH, in return for a simplified modular version of Lorenzo, delivered to a smaller number of NHS trusts.

Christine Connelly, CIO at the Department of Health, said in September that successful deployment of Lorenzo 1.9 at Birmingham Women’s, and at other early adopter sites, was an essential milestone for CSC.