Alfresco Selected By Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust

Published: 10-Jul-2015

The trust will initially migrate 2.5 million documents


Alfresco Software has announced that Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust will deploy its Alfresco One ECM solution.

The trust provides NHS care and treatment for people living in south east England. Care is provided in people's homes, in specialist clinics, hospitals, GP surgeries and prisons. Services are aimed at children, young people and adults of all ages and many are provided in partnership.

The trust had been seeking a suitable solution for storing and managing its documents, images, video and other content. The solution also needed to integrate with Carenotes, the system that will be used as the trust's Electronic Patient Record System to hold uploaded content such as patient documents.

Following a thorough evaluation of a number of leading Enterprise Content Management Systems, Alfresco's open-source solution was identified as the most-appropriate choice, being scalable and flexible enough to meet the needs of the trust now and in the future.

"We always evaluate open source solutions alongside proprietary, as we believe they can offer greater flexibility, better value for money and are easier to integrate. We chose Alfresco because it appears to have all the functionality we need both now and for the future," commented Theresa Jones, head of IT solutions at the trust.

As a hybrid on-premise and cloud system, Alfresco One is a secure, customisable, user-friendly ECM solution that integrates with any existing software and enables up-to-date documents to be accessed from any location.

The trust took a decision to use Alfresco One as a headless repository, eliminating the need for training and integrating seamlessly into the familiar user interface of Carenotes. This would make the transition as straightforward for users as possible.

By bringing all documents from the trust's key clinical systems into a single repository using Alfresco One, staff will benefit from a streamlined process with more accurate indexing of documents, and a reduction in the time spent looking for documents. Clinicians will be able to respond to patients' needs in a timely manner, ultimately allowing it to deliver better patient care.

Alfresco One will put clinical content right at staff fingertips, when they need it, reducing the time spent retrieving documentation and increasing the time available to spend with patients.

The implementation process will be happening in stages, with the trust initially migrating 2.5 million documents that are currently residing in the electronic patient record system.

Following the successful migration of the existing records, the trust will embark on a digitisation project, to scan and store the latest volume of all current paper clinical records, in line with NHS England's wider digital roadmap and paperless 2018 commitments.

The next stage of the project's lifecycle will be to extend the content management capabilities to include non-clinical systems, such as HR and administration.

Using Alfresco's cloud solution, the trust can extend the capabilities of the content management platform to partner organisations outside of the corporate network, but do so in a way that is safe and secure.

Jean van Vuuren, head of healthcare UK at Alfresco, said: "In the NHS, it's crucial that staff can access the information they need wherever they are and whenever they want. Modern enterprise content management solutions like Alfresco One give organisations that flexibility, along with the security measures needed to meet stringent regulatory and compliance requirements."

You may also like