West Suffolk to migrate data with Stalis

West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust has agreed a deal with data migration service Stalis to help manage its transition to the Cerner Millennium electronic patient record system.

Stalis will migrate data from the trust’s existing CSC iExpress patient administration system, as well as A&E, alerts and referral to treatment data, into the Cerner Millennium EPR.

West Suffolk announced in August that it had signed a 10-year contract with Cerner to implement the EPR, in a shift from a ‘best of breed’ to ‘single supplier’ approach.

Dermot O’Riordan, the trust’s chief clinical information officer, told EHI at the time the trust needed to replace its PAS, which is more than 20 years old, and wanted to take a single system approach.

“We made a policy decision that we want to implement a single, integrated system so all the information is in one place to provide the safest care for patients.”

Data will also be migrated from other legacy systems into Cerner Millennium, including the trust’s EPro electronic prescribing system.

The company will provide a secure and accessible historic archive of non-migrated data, meaning minimal data transfer to mitigate risks and timescales. It will also provide data quality assessment and strategies for cleansing, as well as trial load and go-live support.

Stalis’ recent data migration work includes contracts with Barts NHS Trust and Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust, both of which also use Cerner Millennium.

Nick McDonnell, West Suffolk’s chief information officer, said Stalis’ skills and services has given the trust “confidence that we are in safe hands” as it moves onto the Millennium EPR.

“Their experience is already showing through – assisting us with data migration strategy decisions that are both practical and meet the requirements of the organisation and the project.’’

Andrew Meiner, managing director at Stalis, said the contract with West Suffolk helps the company to further establish itself in the NHS data migrations market.

“Our extensive expertise and experience in healthcare means we provide NHS organisations with confidence that their staff are working from the best and most complete information, whether they are clinicians making decisions about patient care, managers monitoring performance against contracts, or service improvement managers investing in reorganisation and change management. ‘’

O’Riordan has said the trust hopes to go-live with Cerner Millennium in October next year, with an “accelerated rollout” of an e-prescribing system to follow, and the potential to deploy maternity and theatre modules.

The trust’s current focus is on identifying its current processes to make sure they align with the EPR, while developing its plans to integrate with systems at other organisations.