Sheffield steels itself for EDM project

Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has picked Restore’s CCube as its electronic document management system as part of its transformation into a digital hospital.

The trust will use the system to scan millions of historical patient notes so staff can access them electronically.

This includes one million library files to be scanned over an eight-year period, 4.6 million attendance or admission files over a four-year period, and about 340 million images.

These files are held in two main medical records libraries at Royal Hallamshire Hospital and Northern General Hospital, as well as seven standalone libraries for areas such as neurology and dental records.

The implementation of EDMS at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals is one aspect of the trust’s 'Transformation through Technology' programme to overhaul its clinical systems.

The project centres around the implementation of CSC’s Lorenzo patient record, which is due to go live on 28 September 2015. Other plans include the introduction of a clinical portal to pull data from the existing 280 computer systems into a bespoke clinical view with a single sign-on.

Infrastructure services are provided by ANS Group and its FlexPod solution for integrated computing, networking and storage.

Anne Hilton, ‎operational change manager at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals, told Digital Health News that the trust’s 15,000 staff won’t have access to CCube directly through Lorenzo at go-live.

Howeer, this capability is expected to be added at a later date, as CSC provides update for the EPR.

She added that the trust will “ease off” on scanning case notes during the roll-out of Lorenzo, with a focus on non-urgent notes such as dental records and older case notes.

The trust has already tested the EDMS in three different pilots, including infectious diseases, which had its own standalone library but is now 100% digital, according to Hilton.

She said that moving to electronic records would be of particular benefit for Sheffield as it is a “disparate, widespread trust” with several locations around the city where patient notes are often physically transported.

“There will be a huge benefit safety and security. We can save staff time and reduce the need to transport case notes.”

Discussing the digital hospital project as a whole, Tracey Scotter, director of informatics at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals, said: “As a trust we have yet to fully embrace technology.

"For example, we had a number of paper libraries of medical records across our estate which meant that one patient could have files in several locations and clinicians were not always able to access a complete picture of a patient.”

“The Transformation Through Technology programme puts patients’ safety at the forefront and means clinicians can securely access patient data in real time from any location, with a full picture of patient medical history.”