EHI Interview: Adrian Stevens

The UK managing director of iSoft says that despite 12 months that have seen a calamitous fall in share price – and the departure of the chairman and chief executive Gary Cohen – the company is in a strong position.

Speaking to E-Health Insider on the eve of eHealth Insider Live 2010, Adrian Stevens said that iSoft has a good product line-up and is delivering on its national programme commitments. “The message is iSoft is alive and well,” he said.

“ISoft is a solid business with good contracted revenue, has solid finances, good existing products, and an exciting next generation product in Lorenzo."

Stevens was effusive in his praise of Cohen, saying he had re-energised the company and left it in a better position than he bought it. “He gave us a solid platform we can now build on.”

Prediction a dangerous hobby

It was Cohen who famously promised at EHI Live 2009 that iSoft would deliver 25 Lorenzo implementations in the coming year as part of the National Programme for IT in the NHS, which is supposed to deploy the electronic patient record software to the North, Midlands and East of England.

The failure to do so, and resulting shortfall in predicted NPfIT income, helped trigger a share price collapse in June.

Stevens told EHI last week that a less flamboyant, more pragmatic iSoft has now emerged. “We need to support all our customer base and support [ local service provider] CSC in fulfilling our commitments to the NHS early adopters,” he said.

He added that, although delayed, he remains confident Lorenzo will be successfully delivered to the four early adopters that must sign it off before CSC and iSoft can receive milestone payments under the NPfIT contract.

The early adopters include one acute trust, one specialist trust, one primary care trust and one mental health trust. The first three have been delivered, though not signed off, leaving Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust to complete the go-live set.

It’s a point that Stevens was unable to comment on. He stressed that although the Lorenzo early adopters are crucial, iSoft’s NHS customer base is far broader and must also be supported with a product portfolio of proven and new products, backed by a focus on interoperability.

Lorenzo, a 10-15 year programme

Stevens said iSoft will deliver on Lorenzo, but says people have been unrealistic about how long major IT programmes take to deliver.

“The majority of IT projects take 10-15 years,” he notes. “The focus on the national programme makes it appear that it [Lorenzo] is taking longer than it actually is.”

He says that while Lorenzo remains a work in progress, the majority of iSoft’s business is with customers using current products and non-Lorenzo customers.

“Lorenzo gets all the headlines but 95% of trusts have an iSoft solution in use at the moment. We have a very strong presence on patient administration systems, departmentals, pathology, A&E, theatres and ICU. We are also a proven player in primary care with products that customers like and use.”

New focus on UK product development

Evidence of this commitment he says can be seen in the firm’s investment in “agile” new UK product development, outside NPfIT. This is in addition to the continuing development of Lorenzo in India.

“We’ve put a development centre of excellence back into the UK, that’s 75 new people working on interoperability, business intelligence, medications management and hosted Synergy,” said Stevens

Central to this new approach iSoft will be offering Lorenzo on a modular basis. “Smart solutions is all about a modular approach of introducing new solutions to the market,” he said.

“We understand that different trusts will have different priorities and different strategies, even though they are working to the same end game.”

Stevens said he is confident NPfIT “will be rolled out”, but that people will take different routes. “I wouldn’t suggest that we are in competition to the national programme deployment plan, we’re not, but there are different ways to reach the same objectives.”

He points to ASCC (Additional Supply Capability and Capacity) procurements in the South of England as a prime example of this new pluralistic approach.

“ASCC in the South may be about some PAS replacements, but it’s mainly about departmentals and clinicals”. But a key part of any new procurements, he added, is that products must be referenceable.

Move to a mixed market

Stevens argued that a more mixed market, in which some trusts take existing iSoft products or Lorenzo modules, is pragmatic and makes sense. “This is right strategy for us as a company, of course we want people to take Lorenzo, but they don’t have to.”

And looking at the changes brought about by the coalition government, gives him further reason to be optimistic about the future.

He argues that although it required a further £700m in savings, the government’s September announcements on NPfIT reaffirmed support for the programme. Despite a new focus on local choice and competition the government did not wind the programme down.

“I think the government put out the announcements on the national programme ahead of the Comprehensive Spending Review to give solidity to the programme,” said Stevens.

iSoft 7, Pennine and ASCC

Looking ahead, iSoft hopes to soon announce a new deal on the iSoft 7, the seven London trust’s that use iSoft; to deliver Lorenzo at Pennine Mental Health; and to participate in any ASCC procurements.

But as much as he talks of bringing new products to the market, Stevens acknowledged that supporting CSC to deliver Lorenzo is still critical to the firm’s future.

“That’s the tipping point for the whole of the national programme. We will support CSC in absolutely any way to achieve the early adopter Release Key Milestone.”