Somerset NHS Foundation Trust has gone live with a solution from Better to digitise its e-prescribing and medications management.
Somerset Partnership FT and Taunton and Somerset NHS FT recently merged to form Somerset NHS FT and is now using OPENeP from Better, across its surgical services. The trust is also to integrate key systems using the Better openEHR platform and to add clinical functionality by using the Better Form Builder.
Andrew Forrest, the trust’s chief information officer “We decided to pursue an open platform and portal based approach to developing an electronic patient record. This offered several advantages, such as allowing us to create a central record and clinical data repository that we can use to feed the best of suite clinical systems that we are adding according to our needs and resources.”
“OPENeP is an important part of the mix, and it is great to see that the system is now live and delivering the benefits of closed loop electronic prescribing and medication management to our staff.”
The EPMA solution was used at former Taunton and Somerset NHS FT, before the merger, as part of its global digital exemplar programme.
Deputy chief clinical information officer and digital safety lead David Chalkley said “When we planned the deployment in early January, we could not have anticipated the scale of impact of COVID-19, yet two weeks after we deployed our staff were being asked to work at home if at all possible. Despite that, the organisation had the confidence to keep going.”
“That’s because OPENeP is so easy to use and once it’s embedded it’s impossible to remove. In fact, we had requests to roll it out further, for example to critical care pods so our colleagues could make prescribing decisions without having to don personal protective equipment [to see the paper chart at the bedside].”
“As a result, we have already expanded OPENeP to critical areas as part of our COVID-19 response, and that will inform our roll-out to medical areas.”
