Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh gets ready for #HISGoLive

Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Foundation Trust has set a go-live date for its deployment of Allscripts Sunrise; and created a Twitter hashtag on which people can follow its progress.

The trust will go-live with the electronic patient record on 28 June, across its five sites: the Royal Albert Infirmary in Wigan itself, Leigh Infirmary, Wrightington Hospital, which provide more specialist services, particularly for elderly patients, the Thomas Linacre Centre, which handles outpatients, and the Wigan Eye Unit.

It has also set up a @HISGoLive hashtag to report on what is happening, with early tweets confirming the go-live date and noting that the project is one of “the biggest ever attempted” by the organisation.

In a statement, chief executive Andrew Foster added: “The [Health Information System] project will put Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh at the forefront of modern healthcare delivery.

“The entire trust is coming together to launch the new system safely and smoothly, ensuring appropriate support to reduce delays in care.”

The trust announced in September 2014 that it had chosen Allscripts as its preferred supplier. At the time, Liverpool Heart and Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trusts were the only UK organisations live with Sunrise.

Since then, Allscripts has also won the contract to provide IT to the University Hospital of South Manchester NHS Foundation Trust, which is due to go live shortly after Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh.

Further trusts in the area may opt for the same technology, as part of a ‘hospital chain’ being developed across Greater Manchester.

HSJ has reported that as part of the ‘Five Year Forward View’ vanguard project centred on Salford, a chain could be developed with Salford Royal and Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust as full members, and Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh and Bolton NHS Foundation Trust as associate members.

The management magazine says this would enable them to share operating systems, care pathways and IT systems.

Pennine Acute is already receiving ‘informatics leadership’ from Salford Royal, while its chief information officer, Rachel Dunscombe, was previously CIO at Bolton. Bolton has been given Department of Health assistance to move off 'burning' IT platforms, as part of a bigger package of support and refurbishment.

Andy Ennis, the chief operating officer at Bolton told HSJ that it would submit a business case for a new EPR in July, and while this would be an open process “one of the things we would consider is how the new system could integrate with those used at our partner trusts.”

Back at Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh, Foster said Allscripts matched the trust’s “mission to be safe, effective and caring and to put the patient at the centre of everything we do.”

The HIS project plans also include access for GPs and a patient portal, through which patients will be able to log-in and view their own records.