Western Sussex Hospitals signs 10-year deal with System C

Western Sussex Hospitals has signed a 10-year deal with System C to deliver a new strategic patient management and theatres system.

The contract provides a single patient management system that will run across the trust’s Worthing, St Richard’s and Southlands hospital sites, aligning them with their Brighton and Haywards Heath hospitals, which already use System C’s CareFlow.

Western Sussex Hospitals recently merged with Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals, which were both included in the first wave of Digital Aspirants, to form University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust.

The two former trusts have been working in partnership with a shared leadership team for nearly four years, and merged to form University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust on 1 April 2021.

Ian Arbuthnot, director of IM&T at the trust, said: “Moving towards a single electronic patient record system ensures our systems are unified and integrated across our hospitals.

“We are committed to embedding clinical excellence and innovation at the heart of the new organisation in line with the NHS Long Term Plan for digitally enabled care.”

Markus Bolton, joint chief executive of System C, added: “It is a very complex process to bring the data and workflow for two organisations together successfully. This is the fourth time we have done it and we are really looking forward to helping the trust realise all the benefits of the merger and meet its ambition to continually improve patient services and the quality of care.”

Under the terms of the contract, the former Western Sussex Hospitals will also be integrating a new theatre management system from Bluespier, System C’s theatres partner.

Stuart van Rooyen, managing director of Bluespier, said: “Bluespier has worked with System C on many CareFlow installations and we are looking forward to building on the success delivered at Brighton across the newly formed University Hospitals Sussex.”