Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust goes live with new NPfIT compliant EPR system

On Sunday 10th June the first patient was admitted to Moorfields Eye Hospital's new CareXML® based Electronic Patient Record system (EPR) provided by Stalis Ltd and known at the Trust as the Moorfields Care Record Service (MCRS). The Stalis EPR, powered by Silverlink PCS, one of the UK's most widely used Patient Administration Systems, provides the Trust with a fully NPfIT compliant solution for Choose & Book and 18 week pathways and replaces a 1980s bespoke system.

Speaking of the implementation, Ian Balmer, Chief Executive for Moorfields Eye Hospital, paid tribute to the dedication of Moorfields and Stalis staff, and the great team spirit and effort that ensured the success of the go-live. "As a Foundation Hospital and a national referral centre, we are dependant upon our contracts with Primary Care Trusts throughout the country. This new system is vitally important to our performance and its introduction comes after ten months of meticulous planning".

The Stalis EPR is built around their CareXML® Patient Data Repository incorporating InterSystems Ensemble® integration technology. As a fully integrated EPR, support is provided for staff and clinicians throughout the Trust. Christine Whitehouse, Stalis' Managing Director, commented "moving the Trust from a highly functional but specially developed PAS to a standards based solution required a very close working relationship between Trust personnel and our team. The challenge was to jointly change hospital processes to take advantage of a comprehensive integrated and inherently more flexible function set and latest technologies combined with the need to meet stringent NPfIT standards".

One of the key objectives for the Trust was to assure business continuity over the transition both operationally and for ongoing management reporting. With nearly 20 years of historical data, much of it associated with long term patient care, the challenges associated with the migration and on going storage of the data were immense. However, use of the Stalis CareXML® repository and associated tools meant that these issues could be planned and addressed from the start of the project, assuring the quality of the data, and supporting the on going reporting from day 1.

In the event the actual go live required no more than 36 hours operational downtime for the final migration and testing processes to be completed and the objective of migrating the majority of appointment bookings (over 5000) to the new system was achieved (all bar 160 being automatically rescheduled) despite major changes in clinic structures and organisation on the new system. Once the new EPR was up and running, data feeding back in near real time into the CareXML® repository was available for continued management reporting. Barrie Winnard, Head of IT for the Trust, comments "without the use of a repository such as CareXML® the work involved in ensuring data quality and consistency for maintaining management information would be near impossible to achieve".

Planning is already underway for the next phases of the Trust's MCRS programme which includes significant developments in clinical and management reporting capabilities.

Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
Opened in 1805, Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is one of the world’s leading centres for ophthalmic treatment and teaching. With our research partner, the Institute of Ophthalmology, we are embarking on an exciting programme of research in order to find cures for diseases currently untreatable. It is the oldest and largest specialist eye hospital in the world, and became one of the UK's first NHS Foundation Trusts in 2004. The entire range of eye diseases is treated at Moorfields Eye Hospital from cataract, to more complex conditions. Our eminent reputation means that patients come to us not only from all over the UK, but from around the world. More information about the hospital can be found at www.moorfields.nhs.uk

Stalis Ltd
The company was established over 20 years ago as a specialist NHS Consultancy organisation, staffed by former NHS Executives, Clinicians and Healthcare IM&T professionals to supply information solutions and support to a large number of healthcare organisations both in the public and private sector. With the advent of the National Programme for IT in Health in England, the business strategy was revised to focus on product based solutions to align with and support the emerging goals of supporting the modernisation of healthcare delivery. The company numbers among its long established clients – Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, The Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust, Capio Group, Sheffield Childrens' Hospital NHS Trust.

Stalis' vision today is to be the leading provider of 'End to End' Data and Resource Management solutions for the health industry to improve the quality of information available to health providers in support of their goals for more efficient management and provision of patient services and resources. for further information, please visit www.stalis.com

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