The University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust has agreed a deal to upgrade its current EuroKing maternity information system to the new E3 version of the software.
The trust, which is said to have the busiest maternity department in Europe, will upgrade its maternity system ahead of becoming one of the first trusts to take a version of iSoft’s iCM clinical system under the NHS IT programme from Computer Sciences Corporation.
The trust wanted a maternity system that would allow the maternity record to be integrated with the other computerised systems within the hospital, to complete a true Electronic Patient Record (EPR), including, for example, pathology and electronic prescribing.
Across the trust the upgraded Euroking maternity information system (MIS) will be accessed by approximately 650 users across the three sites.
UHL consultant obstetrician, Ed Howarth, said: “Our vision is of a full electronic patient record for maternity care which will allow health professionals, within both primary and secondary settings, immediate access to important information about the women they care for. We envisage that this will lead to improvements in patient safety, and more efficient work processes.”
According to EuroKing a key feature of the software is its Connect2 capability, which will allow the MIS to work within the hospital’s existing workflow patterns and provides the trust with the option to roll out E3 into GP surgeries and the community.
The system upgrade will allow the trust to produce maternity notes electronically, recording the whole pathway from confirmation of pregnancy to discharge. The record also covers care by the health visitor during post-natal care and can be used to produce a record for mother and baby together, and for the baby as a separate individual.
A EuroKing spokesperson told E-Health Insider: “The trust needed to get a new system which would be able to get a patient record from another system, update it and store it in their records throughout the three trust.”
As much of the work in maternity is undertaken within the community, it was essential that data could be input in real-time, by both community midwives and clinicians within the hospital.
The data also needs to be shared securely with other professionals such as GPs and health visitors. “As EuroKing’s E3 system is web based, this will be possible via the use of mobile communications e.g. GPRS. Access is easy and midwifes can work from anywhere whilst still keeping a patient’s record up to date,” the spokesperson said.
Using the new E3 system, the trust hopes to benefit increased functionality including patient filtering, care pathways, risk management, electronic partogram, real-time data entry and document management. The introduction of E3 should mean that the trust will also be able to automatically run audits to assist with CNST reporting and report on admissions for PbR.
E3 is a new web-based version of the Miracle Maternity Information System, which now runs on Intersystem’s Cache technology platform and is designed to be operated out of data centres or delivered on an application service provider basis.
The trust has been using EuroKing systems since 1993 and have previously upgraded from the K1 to the K2 system.
A EuroKing spokesperson told EHI: “E3 combines all our knowledge – it meets all government requirements, including standards needed for the National Program for IT in England, however, most importantly, it meets clinician’s needs and helps with the day-to-day clinical care of the most vulnerable in our society.”
The system will also be fully integrated with the obstetric ultrasound department via GE Healthcare’s ViewPoint, supplied and implemented by EuroKing.
ViewPoint will provide a complete digital documentation system allowing robust reporting and image archiving functions, integrating patient scheduling, examination data and lab results into one electronic record.
Leicester’s maternity clinical system manager, Fran Gill, said: “It was imperative that we selected a system that would talk to existing hospital systems & yet allow us to introduce new innovative work flows in maternity. EuroKing’s Connect2 capability offers a system that’s not ‘off the shelf’ and which can be tailored to suit an individual hospital’s needs. Users can change the E3 system for themselves to make working methods more structured. No other supplier could offer us this flexibility.”
Leicester are the fourth third of EuroKing Miracle’s customers to choose to implement E3, the company’s third generation maternity information system in the UK.
The EuroKing spokesperson added: “More and more, trusts are seeing the need to look for new maternity systems to bring their trusts up to date and with the best functionality possible. We are speaking to around 40 trusts to demonstrate to them the benefits that a system like E3 can bring.”
Leicester expects electronic notes to offer many advantages over paper. Manual handling and filing of notes will no longer be an issue, giving savings in time and space. The risk issues bound up with documentation of obstetrics should also be reduced by good design of the data base and the secure retention of the record.
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