Leicester has high hopes for 2013

University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust aims to have a clinical portal and document management system in place by the end of the year.

The trust, which has just selected IBM to provide its IM&T services, is working on the business cases and hopes to have them ready within six weeks.

John Clarke, chief information officer at the trust, told eHealth Insider it is working on several IT projects that will start the journey towards implementing an electronic patient record system.

“Some of them we have come quite a way with so we can move pretty quickly, some of them will take us a bit longer,” he said.

“We hope to have both a clinical portal and electronic document management system in place this year.”

Clarke added that an EPR implementation was, “still a couple of years down the line”.

The trust issued a tender worth £600m in November 2011, looking for a partner to improve its IT services, implement an EPR and form a commercial arrangement to deliver services to other organisations.

The partnership with IBM is initially worth £60m with room for expansion over the 15 year contract.

Clarke explained: “The initial piece here is £60m, but over the time of the contract it could go up to the value of the OJEU tender. The OJEU was a sort of fishing expedition to get the big companies interested, but also to make sure there’s enough room within the contract scope.”

Clarke said IBM would help the trust source the right products to transform its IT services. Whether the products would come from IBM or an external supplier would depend on the company.

“IBM have the expertise in doing this, they’ve done it around the world and can provide that to us as a service. We won’t necessarily go to procurement, but IBM might. That’s where they fit in,” he said.

“It’s not us and a supplier, it’s a partnership, and we’re very clear on that. It’s a non-exclusive relationship, if they can’t provide us with what we want we can go out to procurement again.”

The trust will transfer its IT services to IBM and its partner, NTT DATA, which will provide infrastructure and related services.

The deal includes transferring 88 staff. Clarke told EHI the trust was working this through with HR to make the transition as smooth as possible.

“The transition of services have started, the first staff transfers will happen in August and will be finishing in July 2014, so it’s a long transition” he added.

Clarke said retaining clinical engagement through this process was important. The trust has just appointed two chief clinical information officers who will share one full-time position.

“We want to engage on all levels, we see these roles as significant leadership roles not necessarily to do all the work, but to start the engagement,” he said.