Bury is Lorenzo’s November milestone

NHS Bury is “on-track” to deploy Lorenzo Regional Care (Release 1.9) by November 2009; the deadline set for a further deployment of the system by director general of health informatics Christine Connelly.

At Healthcare Computing 2009, Connelly said the iSoft electronic patient record system for the North, Midlands and East must be “implemented in any care-setting by November” and “running smoothly” across one acute trust by March next year.

In May, E-Health Insider learned that Kettering General Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Derbyshire Mental Health Services NHS Trust and NHS Bury had all agreed to become additional early adopters.

Earlier this month, it emerged that the Derbyshire trust had instead decided on a hardware upgrade to support its existing iSoft patient administration system. But it remained unclear which of the other trusts was looking to meet the November deadline.

In a statement, Stephen Mills, chief executive of NHS Bury, said: “We are continuing to prepare for the deployment of Lorenzo Regional Care by November and the project at Bury is on track.

“We are doing this with the support of NHS North West, NHS Connecting for Health and CSC Alliance. In accordance with local plans, the implementation of Lorenzo at this stage will not include neighbouring NHS organisations.”

Last week, Michael Mancuso, vice president of local service provider CSC, told analysts on a call about CSC’s earnings that it was now focused on Bury and that it was key to further payments from the National Programme for IT in the NHS.

“The key trust is Bury; that’s where the first adopter site has been selected of the go forward on the November milestone,” he said.

“As we’ve always said, we get milestone payments. That milestone is a significant milestone and we need to achieve that milestone to get our full anticipated payments from the NHS.”

During the call, Mancuso also responded to the news that Derbyshire had decided against its implementation of Lorenzo, which EHI exclusively revealed.

Although the trust confirmed that it would not be implementing Lorenzo until at least 2012-13, Mancuso said: “Derbyshire from our people’s perspective is not an issue.

“Derbyshire is committed to Lorenzo but pushed it out a bit. It wasn’t planned for this quarter and it’s a small trust with no impact on milestones.”

Link: CSC