InterSystems has continued its march through Scotland, with NHS Fife the latest to sign-up to the TrakCare platform.
The largely rural Scottish health board that services 370,000 people will go-live with TrakCare as its electronic patient record platform in April 2017.
It will be the 12th Scottish health board to adopt an InterSystems EPR.
When the American-based companies system is adopted in Fife, more than nine out of 10 people living in Scotland with have their health records on an InterSystems EPR.
This is stark contrast to England, where only a few NHS trusts are well advanced in implementing TrakCare as their EPR.
Yeovil District Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is understood to have gone live with TrakCare earlier this month, although it has yet to confirm that the deployment was successful. They follow North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust which went live with InterSystems in October last year.
William Edwards, eHealth general manager at NHS Fife, said TrakCare had been chosen specifically to “converge” with other Scottish boards, a goal that opened access to extra NHS National Services Scotland.
“In Scotland the boards have decided to convergence is the way to go. There are challenges in operating several different system,” he said.
It is hoped that sticking with the same EPR as other Scottish boards will provide economies of scale and more leverage with the supplier if problems arise, he said.
“It minimises the risk of any single board.”
Currently Fife has a hodgepodge of different legacy systems, including an Oasis patient administration system.
The vast majority of these will be replaced by the single TrakCare EPR, including the PAS.
“We are moving away for loading various windows to going to just one place.”
The contract does not include e-prescribing.
Last year, NHS National Services Scotland set up a framework worth up to £20 million to allow boards to buy electronic prescribing and medicine administration systems.