Homerton moves into Cerner data centre

Homerton University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust became the first UK trust to move into Cerner’s new remote hosting facility last month.

The trust successfully transferred its IT environment from BT hosting into Cerner’s UK data centre, which is run by Equinix in London.

Homerton was one of the first trusts in the UK to deploy Millennium when it negotiated an initial contract with Cerner in 2003.

When the National Programme for IT in the NHS was launched, the contract arrangements were altered to include BT as local service provider.

That national programme contract expired in January this year, when the trust confirmed it was extending the original contract with Cerner by seven years.

The contract award notice said the trust decided not to issue a formal tender to assess the option of moving to another supplier because of its “close working arrangement” with the US company.

Homerton chief executive Nancy Hallett said the subsequent transfer to the Cerner data centre had been done with amazing speed, and that since the move, the trust had seen a significant improvement in the performance of Millennium.

“Cerner’s commitment to provide a smooth transition of our IT environment to the remote hosting facility gives us added operational confidence,” said Hallett.

A statement from the company says remote hosting means “Cerner takes the accountability for solution hosting, management, and risk protection around technology obsolesce, allowing Cerner’s clients to concentrate its energies on operational efficiency and clinical process improvement.”