Wye Valley NHS Trust is the latest UK healthcare provider to sign up to an open source electronic patient record (EPR) after agreeing a five-year service contract with IMS MAXIMS.
The trust will work closely with IMS MAXIMS to implement the openMAXIMS EPR software to support the creation of accurate, accessible and integrated care records across its acute and community hospitals. The system will eventually integrate across multiple care settings, including social and primary care.
By reducing its dependency on paper notes, the trust is working towards the national ambition within NHS England’s Five Year Forward View to ensure electronic health records are fully interoperable and supporting health secretary Jeremy Hunt’s challenge for the NHS to be paperless by 2018.
“For us, this is not an ICT project, it is about clinical process change assisted by the right technology” said Simon Lind, project and portfolio manager at Wye Valley NHS Trust.
“Our decision to work with IMS MAXIMS was based on many things including its ambition to use open source as an option for generating the benefits of a strong electronic patient record. We can tailor the software for our specific requirements and share or access developments in the code with other healthcare providers. The fact there are no licence charges was of particular interest to us.”
Clinicians from across the trust will be able to access relevant and appropriate information within a single electronic patient record, at the point of care, to help them make more-informed decisions on the diagnosis and treatment of a patient.
Dr Jake Burdsall, consultant lead for IT at the Wye Valley NHS Trust, said: “To have visibility of a patient’s record, especially in emergency situations, is fundamental for improving care. You cannot underestimate the importance of having clinical information, be it past attendances, episodes or diagnostic results, to help make immediate and future decisions on a patient’s care.”
The EPR will be used as a platform to integrate the trust’s existing systems which will increase the amount of patient contact for clinicians as less time will be spent on chasing test results and looking for mislaid patient records. In addition, the 2,000 users of the new system will no longer require multiple logins and passwords to access different diagnostic systems, freeing up time for more important tasks.
At a time when the NHS is looking to improve patient outcomes while becoming a more efficient service, Wye Valley has taken the very considered and astute decision when selecting its approach to clinical technology
New clinical functionality will also be introduced as a result of deploying the EPR. Additional modules within the project include order communications and diagnostics reporting, including all pathology and radiology tests; electronic discharge summaries and clinic letters; and scheduling for beds, tests and theatres. The digital capture and management of patient information provides more opportunities to deliver co-ordinated care for the trust.
The implementation of the EPR will replace the current Patient Administration Systems (PAS) from the National Programme for IT by the end of 2016.
Wye Valley will become the second NHS trust to implement openMAXIMS, the UK’s-first open source EPR, after Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust goes live later this year.
Shane Tickell, chief executive of IMS MAXIMS, said: “This is yet another significant step in the adoption of open source technology within healthcare. At a time when the NHS is looking to improve patient outcomes while becoming a more efficient service, Wye Valley has taken the very considered and astute decision when selecting its approach to clinical technology.
“Wye Valley NHS Trust will have software that meets the needs of clinicians and is flexible in its implementation, helping to save and manage precious hospital resources more effectively.”
