Clatterbridge plans Meditech go-live this month

Clatterbridge Cancer Centre NHS Foundation Trust is planning to go live with Meditech v6.07 later this month.

The trust, which operates from ten sites across Merseyside and Cheshire, and treats more than 30,000 patients a year, was planning to go live with the system last October. However, in a set of update notes to Digital Health News, a spokesperson said it had changed its plans so that it could include an oncology module from the outset.

“The initial launch involves replacing four systems – IMS Maxims, Hearts patient administration system, Ascribe e-prescribing, and eCeptionist chemotherapy scheduling,” the notes said. “The original plan was to launch the core modules in October 2015 and the oncology module at a later data.

“During the detailed planning, it became clear that it would be far better to launch them together, because of the links in the clinical workflow process and functionality. The timetable was revised and in December 2015 we identified May 2016 as the go-live date.”

The trust is involved in a Transforming Cancer Care project, at the heart of which is a new, £118m specialist cancer centre in Liverpool. The trust wants the first phase of its IT project in place before the move, to make sure the new system is running smoothly and efficiently before the new centre is opened.

It signed a ten year, £7.5 million contract with Centennial MIT to implement Meditech in August 2014, after visiting the US to see how the system is used within specialist oncology services.

In the update notes, the trust pointed out that it is “already quite advanced with our existing EPR systems, with e-prescribing fully implemented for complex chemotherapy treatment and integration with our radiotherapy treatment systems.”

It has also been rolling out Kainos’ Evolve electronic patient casenotes. “Over 50% of our active patient records have been digitised and, from April 2016, all newly-registered patients have an ‘electronic only’ casefile,” the notes said.

Despite this, the spokesperson said “the more exciting benefits” of the implementation will follow in the later phases of the project, when it adds advanced clinical decision support and a patient portal, which will enable all of its patients to securely access their oncology medical record online.

Further developments include the implementation of Healthcare Gateway’s Medical Interoperability Gateway to support the electronic distribution of clinical correspondence and discharge summaries to GPs.

“Our strategic aim is to have fully electronic and interoperable electronic patient records before our new state of the art cancer hospital opens in Liverpool city centre in 2019, at which point we expect to be assessed as a HIMSS Stage 7 site,” the notes concluded.

The full list of Meditech modules to be deployed by the trust is: ONC – oncology; ABS – abstracting (clinical coding); ADM – admissions (inpatients, ward attenders); DR – data repository and links to data warehouse; HIM – health information management (PAS, patient demographics); CWS – community wide scheduling (appointment and advanced resource scheduling); ITS – radiology ordering and reporting / clinical correspondence; rLAB – restricted labs (labs ordering and resulting); OM – order management (other order comms); PHA – pharmacy (e-prescribing and medicines administration); MM – material management (pharmacy stock control); PCM – physical care manager (clinical management); PCS – patient care system (nursing, assessments etc); NMI – medical interfacing ( to RIS, Labs, WCCR, etc); RW / RD – report writer / report designer (ad hoc operational reports); zGL – connection to general ledger.

Interview with Helen Waters: Digital Health news editor Rebecca McBeth recently interviewed Meditech’s vice president for sales and marketing about the company’s deployments, plans, and prospects in the UK market. Read the interview in Digital Health Features.