Stoke Mandeville switches on Millennium

Stoke Mandeville hospital has become the latest hospital site to go-live with the Cerner Millennium patient administration and clinical software under the £12.4bn NHS IT programme.

The software supplied by Cerner was implemented by Fujitsu, the local service provider for the South of England.  The trust has gone live with the release 0 version of the software, a version that does not yet connect with the NHS Spine.  

The hospital, part of the Buckinghamshire Hospitals NHS Trust, successfully switched on the Millennium software in 28 inpatient areas across the hospital on the evening of Sunday, 30 March.  This was followed by the four main theatre groups and outpatients clinics on Monday, 31 March.

Stoke Mandeville is medium-sized acute hospital, which includes an A+E department National Spinal Injuries Centre.  It is the first hospital served by Fujitsu to go live with Cerner since Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust in January.

The apparantly successful implementation indicates that despite the stalled ‘contract reset’ negotiations between the NHS Southern programme for IT and Fujitsu work has not stopped, though sources are emphatic that further implementation work has almost ground to a halt.

A trust spokesperson told E-Health Insider: “The deployment was on target and to plan. The hospital now joins the Trust’s other hospitals at Wycombe and Amersham in using Millennium CRS, and represents the culmination of 18 months of detailed planning in partnership with Fujitsu.

“No significant problems have been reported in the run up to, during or post go live, and we are delighted that the switch over from our legacy PAS system has progressed so smoothly.”

The hospital is the third site in the Buckinghamshire health community to go-live, following the Amersham and Wycombe Hospitals, Chalfont & Gerrards Cross Hospital and Marlow Cottage Hospital, who went live in September 2006.

The spokesperson added that lessons learnt from these initial deployments 18-months ago had helped them to better prepare at Stoke Mandeville.

“The lessons learned from our previous roll-out at Wycombe and Amersham hospitals were fully utilised, which helped to make the implementation a success. The project team is largely the same as that from implementation at Wycombe and Amersham and this meant that the Trust was able to draw on a wealth of experience.

“We would also like to recognise the enormous contribution that our 150 expert users (SuperUsers) played in supporting their colleagues during this transitional process, particularly in the initial days after go-live.” 

Stoke Mandeville Hospital joins the rest of Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes as part of a regional domain in the South Central Strategic Health Authority patch.

The spokesperson said: “For the first time, all members of the Buckinghamshire Shared Services domain are able to communicate with each other using one single system.”

Steve Finch, head of communications for the Southern Programme for IT told EHI that the implementation had been a success, adding: “we are working towards further deployments in the south.”

The next trust due to go-live with R0 is believed to be Bath Royal United Hospitals. A spokesperson confirmed the trust is testing the system, but could not provide EHI with a go-live date.

Fujitsu said they would be unable to comment on deployment work until the 45 day implementation programme work has been completed.

In London, Barts and the London, are due to go live this weekend with Millennium. BT confirmed to EHI they will be moving to Release 1 for subsequent trusts, but declined to provide further details.

If any readers working at Stoke Mandeville or other sites working with Cerner would like to share their experiences, either on the record or in confidence, please either post a reader comment using the tool above or email editor@e-health-media.com.

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Buckinghamshire goes live with Cerner