Sheffield Children’s goes live with System C EPMA

Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust has gone live with its integrated electronic prescribing and medicines administration (EPMA) solution from System C, making Sheffield Children’s the first specialist paediatric trust to integrate System C’s CareFlow Medicines Management (CMM) across the EPR pathway.

The move from paper drug cards to CMM has so far taken place across 10 inpatient areas at the trust. Phase two will focus on the remaining inpatient areas, outpatients, the emergency department, Becton Centre and Ryegate Children’s Centre.

By integrating CMM with its patient administration system (PAS) and other care coordination solutions, Sheffield Children’s is looking to advance its digital maturity, improve the inpatient process and provide a more transparent solution to medicines management.

The original tender process in 2020, saw Sheffield Children’s procure the WellSky EPMA, before it was acquired by System C. The company’s EPR solutions – including the PAS, CareFlow Connect, Vitals and Patient flow – were already being used, alongside the TMS Insight Pharmacy Tracker System.

The trust worked with System C to join up the different solutions across the entire pathway, linking information from multiple systems and integration workflows between acute and community care settings.

The EPMA system was optimised for children and young people – the trust also included additional functionality, such as drug infusions and drug protocols, to maximise its use for complex paediatric requirements.

Nick Wilson, CEO, System C said: “We have provided Sheffield Children’s PAS for over 10 years but as the trust has become more digital-focused, it gave us an opportunity to work together to integrate CMM and our other solutions, at scale, for the first time. This whole-team effort will transform the way staff work by providing all the information they need in one place.”

The integration is a key milestone in Sheffield Children’s digital strategy to achieve HIMSS EMRAM Level 5 digital maturity accreditation by March 2025.

The next part of Sheffield Children’s digital journey is to implement Workspace, PDS/CPIS, and Clinical Narrative Document Exchange from System C.