Birmingham Women’s live with Lorenzo

Birmingham Women’s Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has confirmed that it has gone live with Lorenzo Release 1.9, which includes patient administration system functionality.

The trust went live with iSoft’s electronic patient record system, provided by local service provider CSC under the National Programme for IT in the NHS, over the weekend. The final clinical areas went live this morning.

Steve Peak, chief executive at Birmingham Women’s, said in a statement: “All areas of clinical activity were brought live by the project team in a phased manner over the weekend.

"By the morning of 1 November 2010 every area in our hospital was using Lorenzo. It is clearly good news to have taken this important step.

"At this stage, it is the beginning of a journey; so whilst we can be pleased to have gone live with the new system, we must remember we have much work still to do.”

On Friday, E-Health Insider reported that the trust planned to go live with the system, subject to all the necessary criteria around technical capability and clinical safety measures being met.

Earlier in the week, the clinical lead for informatics at University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust, which is the only other acute trust that has gone live with the system, said that the software was “not ready for release” when it went live with it back in June.

Peak said: “With the launch of any new computer system, you expect to encounter teething problems that only appear after go-live. We have a team of people on site who are correctly equipped to both identify and fix any that may appear.

“It is important to note that the Lorenzo Care Management [Release 1.9] is just the first step in the movement to an electronic health record. Success at this stage provides the substantial platform to which further modules will be added.

“I am confident that this is the first phase in a major change programme that, when finished, will provide benefit to the way patients are treated for many years into the future.”

The go-live is good news for iSoft and CSC. Both companies are waiting on payments under NPfIT, which will only be received when four NHS trusts have gone live with the system.

NHS Bury, Morecambe Bay and now Birmingham Women’s have all gone live. The final milestone trust, Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust, last month told E-Health Insider that it was reviewing its options for go live.