Humber ‘activates’ Lorenzo

CSC appears to have met a key milestone in the deployment of the Lorenzo electronic patient record that it is contracted to deliver across the North, Midlands and East.

Humber NHS Foundation Trust indicated this morning that it had gone live with the system, four days before the ‘standstill’ agreement between CSC and the Department of Health runs out on Friday.

In a short statement issued by the trust, chief executive David Snowdon said: “We are the first mental health trust in England to go live with Lorenzo, a brand new electronic patient record system.

“The system was activated on 28 May 2012 and over 500 staff across 50 sites are using it.”

Humber became the first mental health ‘early adopter’ of Lorenzo after Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust pulled out of the early adopter programme last spring.

Pennine Care has subsequently taken part in a joint procurement for new systems for seven mental health trusts in the North West that is being led by NHS Shared Business Services.

However, Humber has always seemed keen on the system and on trialling extensions of it, such as for mobile working.

Company executives said last month that CSC is losing money on the contract that it won as part of the National Programme for IT in the NHS, which it blamed for "poorly" fourth-quarter results in May.

In February, EHI reported that it was planning to make up to 500 people working on its NHS account redundant, from a total of 1,700. CSC’s shares have shed almost half of their value over the past year.