Some 650 clinicians and 50 support staff are successfully using the software to record all clinical outpatient, delivery and postnatal activity. These figures include around 120 midwives working in the community, who will use digital pens to collect assessment and booking information and enter it directly into Medway.

Lucy Kean, obstetric service lead for NUH, said the deployment was an ambitious one, with all users across both Nottingham City Hospital and the Queen's Medical Centre campuses going live simultaneously during busy antenatal clinics.

"The staff have taken to the system very quickly and we are already reaping the benefits of more complete electronic records, such as being able to determine when women have been seen at hospital and what has happened to them," Dr Kean said. "As we move forward with the new system the benefits will continue to build, moving us eventually to a paper-light, if not almost paperless, system."

By the end of the first day, Medway Maternity had been used to record almost 80 antenatal assessments. Details of over five thousand booked patients and their alerts were migrated from the Trust's 20-year old maternity system. Staff also chose not to migrate antenatal booking information but had started to pre populate their system with currently booking information in preparation for their go live.

As well as having clear and concise functionality supporting hospital activity, Medway Maternity also captures full in-depth patient care information to support the hand-held records. All users have easy access to regularly updated electronic clinical guidance materials relating to local and national standards. The software is interfaced to the Trust's PAS and results reporting software. In addition, there are a number of feeds to other downstream systems, including neonatal, fetal medicine and GP systems.

The next phase at Nottingham includes the roll out of System C's community module using digital pen technology to capture bookings and ante- and postnatal assessments and feed them back to the hospital's maternity electronic patient record. Midwives will also be able to view CTG activity for surveillance and archiving.

Dr Ian Denley, senior vice president of System C, said: "A lot of hospitals have bought Medway Maternity recently, and it is particularly good to see the software being used successfully at one of the country's busiest maternity units."

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• System C Healthcare's Profile

About System C Healthcare
System C Healthcare, specialises in the design and development of clinical patient management and business intelligence software, and provides systems implementation and consulting services to the health and social care sectors.

System C is a subsidiary of McKesson Corporation, which currently ranks 14th on the FORTUNE 500. McKesson is a global healthcare services and information technology company dedicated to helping its customers deliver high-quality healthcare by reducing costs, streamlining processes, and improving the quality and safety of patient care.