Guy’s and St Thomas’ delays £450m EPR go live to ensure safety

Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS Foundation Trust (GSTT) has delayed the implementation of its new £450 million electronic patient record (EPR) to allow more time to launch the system safely.

Back in November 2020, Digital Health News reported that Guy’s and St Thomas’ had signed a deal with US supplier Epic for a new EPR which was due to go live in April of this year.

However GSTT, one of England’s biggest NHS trusts, made the decision to postpone the launch after beginning to transfer data from its old IT systems to Epic as part of the preparatory work.

It is now due to go live at the same time as King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, which confirmed it had secured funding in February 2022 for the roll-out of its Epic EPR, scheduled for October 2023.

A spokesperson for Guy’s and St Thomas’ said: “Evidence from elsewhere is very clear that data quality will be absolutely critical to a smooth go-live.

“Having started the process of data migration from our legacy IT systems to Epic, it has become clear that we need to do more work to ensure we can launch Epic safely, and with minimum disruption to the services we provide.

“This will also provide extra time to complete the important technical readiness work that is currently underway.”

The spokesperson added that the trust would now be going live in late September or early October and it will happen jointly and at the same time as King’s College, who they are “working together with to finalise the precise go-live date as quickly as possible”.

The £450 million cost of the EPR includes its implementation and running costs over a period of 15 years across both trusts.

Epic’s EPR system has become more prominent across the NHS in the last year. In June and July 2022 respectively, Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust and Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust went live with their Epic EPRs.