8 October 2014

Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust gets the go ahead for new technology to transform patient care


A five year technology transformation programme is set to get underway at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust after a successful bid to attract Department of Health funding for a new Electronic Patient Record system.

The new Electronic Patient Record is just one part of a £35 million Transformation Through Technology programme which will revolutionise how patient care is delivered in the City’s adult hospitals and in community health services. Also being implemented is a Clinical Portal and an Electronic Document Management System.

Dr David Throssell, Medical Director at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust explains:

“Over the next five years we are investing more than £35 million to transform many of the IT systems we have in place at the moment so that we can continue to provide high quality, safe and responsive care to our patients.

We are a trailblazer in so many areas thanks to the innovation and dedication of our clinical and non-clinical colleagues across hospital and community care. However this is often hindered rather than helped by some of the IT systems which we have had for many years.
But we don't want to just update, we want to transform our organisation into one which has cutting edge systems to support the transformation in care we want and need to deliver over coming years.

One example of this is that currently a patient’s records are mainly paper based and can be located across numerous places in our hospitals or in community health services. This is because of the different illnesses a patient has or the care they need. This often means the complete picture of a patient’s health and care is not available to a clinician at the time they see the patient. We need to give clinicians all the information they need, at all times, at all locations. Our current Patient Administration System (PAS) does not allow us to join up all our patient records. The new Electronic Patient Record system will enable all of a patient’s hospital and community health records to be available, all in one view, 24hrs, 7 days a week.

During the last 12 months more than 750 of our clinicians and admin staff have been involved in determining what we need from the new Electronic Patient Record system, they have visited other Trusts to learn from their experiences and considered the functionality and benefits various Electronic Patient Record systems could bring to the Trust. After a very careful process of clinical and financial evaluation we are pleased to confirm that we have chosen Lorenzo, (provided by CSC) for our new Electronic Patient Record. The Trust has been successful in its bid to attract Department of Health funding to deploy the Lorenzo Electronic Patient Record (EPR) system across the Trust. This means we can now begin the implementation work and a ‘go live’ date is planned for the end of 2015.”

Dr Rhona Maclean, Consultant Haematologist and one of the Clinical Leads for the Transformation Through Technology programme said:

“We are very clear that to remain one of the leading NHS hospital Trusts in the country with regards to delivering excellent clinical outcomes and a good patient experience, we need to move into the digital age. We plan to be paper light by 2018 and one of the first steps will be to convert case notes into electronic records as soon as possible to meet this target.

The collective new technology has the potential in the future to share electronic patient information with a patient’s GP or other healthcare provider. This will enable care to be better co-ordinated and faster processing of patient referrals for treatment. By reducing paper forms and records, we will improve security of patient information. It will remove paper chasing, and give safer, more reliable and accurate data. The new system will eventually include the ability to do Electronic prescribing which will reduce errors due to handwritten prescriptions, flag up any reasons why the patient cannot have a certain drug and also enable quicker turnaround of prescriptions and discharge from hospital.”

Sir Andrew Cash, Chief Executive of Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust added: “I am confident that this is just the first step in a major change programme that, when finished, will provide benefit to the way patients are treated for many years into the future.”

Philippe Houssiau, CSC’s UK Vice President of Healthcare, said

“We are honoured to be working with Sheffield Teaching Hospitals, enabling technology that will be at the heart of an integrated care initiative embracing all 15,500 staff and improving outcomes for patients across the city. CSC’s Lorenzo will be a foundation component for the hospital’s Transformation Through Technology programme, but we’re aiming to go well beyond simply delivering an electronic patient record system. We look forward to a long-term partnership engaging with the Trust and its staff to help them dramatically transform the way they deliver care.”
 

ENDS

8 October 2014



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