Optimum HealthWare Wins North Cheshire Contract

North Cheshire Hospitals NHS Trust has awarded a contract to Optimum HealthWare for its MultiVue patient indexing tool to provide a single view of patients’ details across multiple systems and sites.

The trust, formed from a merger of Halton and Warrington Hospitals, has patient administration, clinical and departmental legacy systems, each with their own patient identifiers.

Peter Walsh, the trust’s director of information, commented, "The merger of two separate hospitals meant that we were left with a legacy of two very different IT architectures and strategies. The government targets to achieve EPR, alongside the vital need to provide the best possible care to patients, meant that we needed a complete index of our patients across the two sites, linked in to our patient administration and clinical systems.

“After a competitive tender of six companies, it became clear that Optimum HealthWare was the only company that could link our patient records across both sites through a common repository.”

Optimum HealthWare, a division of VisionWare plc, says it is delivering its .NET-based MultiVue common indexing solution and VuePoint Integrator, to the trust to integrate the Meditech system at the Warrington site and the K-PAS system at the Halton site.

In addition, it will also integrate the trust’s MOLIS laboratory system and a web-based order communications system. MultiVue will act as an overlaying web-based architecture for all the trust’s applications, providing a common record for all patients.

The system promises the key benefit of making complete records available, including patient histories and test results, to support faster, more accurate decisions about care.

Optimum HealthWare says the system will also enable the trust to address critical issues such as clinical risk and governance, with the common index and unique numbering scheme enabling them to meet the demands of the Clinical Negligence Scheme. Significant administrative benefits will also be reaped, including the ability to address duplicated records and data quality.