It’s the customer that counts. With healthcare IT that means ensuring that the NHS, and private providers, can achieve their goals and deliver for patients. Unfortunately, as the regular tales of deeply troubled deployments prove, this does not always happen – undermining huge investments in time and money.

I would like to suggest a way forward. On the one hand suppliers need to have the integrity to advise customers on how to fulfill their real needs, rather than simply selling everything they can. On the other, healthcare organisations should take a good long look at their options. This can require a fresh approach.

There are three points that buyers should consider when choosing a supplier:

1. Do they have the proven ability to deliver solutions that do the job and which clinicians, and others, find good to work with?
2. Is the supplier agile – doing whatever it takes to ensure the customer can realise their goals?
3. Are they ambitious and creative – with a real determination to succeed?

I recently became aware of a case where someone was unhappy with what the big UK companies were offering and wondered if they should look to the USA. The jump across the Atlantic can be a big one, especially if you haven’t looked at all the small and medium sized suppliers in the UK and Ireland which have excellent IT developed specifically for local needs.

These are often companies that are already providing services for millions of patients and can readily handle health service needs. They are also the companies that survived years of being squeezed out by NPfIT specifically because of their ability, agility, and ambition. And certainly, if anything went to show that bigger is not always better, then it’s the national programme.

I have huge sympathy with any NHS organisation trying to determine where to go with its IT. In many cases the NPfIT experiment left them short of the expertise they needed to make the right decisions at a local level. Suppliers must pick up the baton and give genuinely impartial advice.

Not all legacy systems need to be replaced – some work fine, or should be gradually eased out. In other cases it may be best to concentrate on the basics first, ensuring there is a sound system for dealing with core needs like patient administration first, moving on to specialist applications later. There are even situations where a company knows that while its own products are ideal for most of a customer’s needs, there are others that would be best served by bringing in a partner.

Suppliers taking this approach build trust, and while no one gets everything right, they will give themselves, and the industry, a good reputation. They also need to look to the future. The best suppliers are there for the long haul and do more than just send out generic annual upgrades. That means ensuring that their products adapt to each customer’s needs – so their solutions are still delivering for many years to come.

Shane Tickell CEO IMS MAXIMS

Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust’s has announced the go-live of its clinical portal across the trust. The portal will allow vital patient information, stored on a variety of systems, to be called up in a single view and in real-time reducing the length of clinic times and improving patient care and services.

The portal has been deployed across seven therapeutic areas including orthopaedics, cardiology, diabetes and haematology and is already providing clinicians with instant access to a range of patient data including test results, medical images and correspondence.

CSC has collaborated with Carefx, a subsidiary of Harris and leading interoperability platform provider, to deploy the portal. The organisations have worked closely with clinicians at the trust to tailor the portal to their requirements.

Chris Walker, trauma and orthopaedic consultant at the trust, said: “The portal gives clinicians an electronic patient record which provides us with a simple, clear and instant view of the essential information we need, on a single screen. This is already bringing benefits to both the patients and clinicians as it ensures we have access to the correct patient information when we need it, before, during and after a consultation or procedure. In addition, less time is wasted trying to sort through and decipher paper notes”.

“We are now able to assemble and present the information from the portal in a format that works for us, creating an interface which is clinician-friendly and highly flexible.”

The trust decided to deploy the clinical portal following a successful proof of concept (PoC) evaluation last year, which showed major benefits including an average reduction in the length of clinic times by 30 minutes, improved patient services, safety and savings in staff time and resources.  Following the PoC, clinicians were actively asking the trust’s IT department how quickly they could gain access to the portal to experience further benefits.

James Norman, the trust’s IT director, said: “The portal presents data from underlying systems, which the clinicians are familiar with, in an easy ‘iGoogle’ style format so training has been quick and simple and uptake by the clinicians has been astonishing.

“The proof of concept exceeded all expectations in terms of the availability, speed, performance of the portal as well as the quality of the data integrity and we are now beginning to see those benefits being realised across the trust.”

In addition to the clinical benefits, the portal has created a bridge between existing applications, which is enabling the trust to extend the life of existing systems that might otherwise need to be upgraded or replaced. The portal is currently supporting access to data from systems such as orders and results, x-rays, clinical letters, GP referral letters and pre-operative assessments, with more systems being integrated in the next phases.

Tony Bell, the trust’s CEO, said: “Never before has there been more focus on the importance of improving patient care while simultaneously making efficiency savings. The clinical portal is the keystone in helping lay solid foundations for the trust’s future creating an effective and efficient way to reduce costs and administration, while speeding up and increasing the throughput of patients and aiding service transformation.

“Not only has the portal allowed us to protect our existing IT investments but it has enabled us to align ourselves with the government’s interoperability agenda ensuring that our systems are future proofed.”

The organisations will continue to work collaboratively to extend the clinical portal to the wards, and emergency departments. In addition, the trust will provide limited access to the system for GPs to reduce delays in informing family doctors about any interventions to support the delivery of seamless care.

Ends

About Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals Trust

The trust is among the largest hospital trusts in the north of England with an annual budget of over £400 million, and 5,600 directly contracted staff. In 2009-10 it saw 567,683 in its outpatient department, 88,000 emergency patients and 86,000 day case admissions. The trust provides general hospital services and emergency care to the local community including a full range of medical, surgical, diagnostic, rehabilitation and therapy services. These include several nationally and internationally recognised services such as ophthalmology, hepatobilliary, surgery, gastroenterology and pathology. It is one of the top 20 teaching trusts in the country. For further information visit www.rlbuht.nhs.uk

About CSC

CSC is a global leader in providing technology-enabled business solutions and services. Headquartered in Falls Church, Va., CSC has approximately 97,000 employees and reported revenue of $16.2 billion for the 12 months ended September 30, 2011. For more information, visit the company’s website at www.csc.com.

About Harris Corporation

Carefx is a subsidiary of Harris Corporation, an international communications and information technology company serving government and commercial markets in more than 150 countries. Headquartered in Melbourne, Florida, the company has approximately $6 billion of annual revenue and about 17,000 employees — including nearly 7,000 engineers and scientists. Harris is dedicated to developing best-in-class assured communications^® products, systems, and services. Additional information about Harris Corporation is available at: www.harris.com.

Media Contacts

Leanne Wilson,
Media Communications Officer, Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust
Phone: +44 (0)151 7065584
leanne.wilson@rlbuht.nhs.uk  

Sarah Bruce, Highland Marketing
Phone: +44 (0)1877 332710
Mobile: +44 (0)7557 265473
sarahb@highland-marketing.com