Queen Victoria Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has launched its electronic patient record, named “Archie” in honour of surgeon Sir Archibald McIndoe.
The trust awarded the EPR contract, worth an estimated £10,631,245.25, in 2024 to Insight Direct, subcontracting services to Altera Digital Health.
Implementation work began last year, with core elements relating to inpatients, outpatients, electronic prescribing, theatres and minor injuries and reporting modules going live this month.
A factsheet has been prepared offering additional information and insight into the Archie EPR, sharing key reasons for its introduction including improving clinician access to patient information, providing a “single version of the truth”, reducing administrative time, and enabling supporting administrative and reporting systems to “drill down” into areas of interest.
Tamara Everington, the trust’s chief medical officer, commented: “The Archie EPR programme is not just a technological upgrade; it represents a fundamental cultural shift in the way QVH operates. Patient care will remain at the heart of our mission with this change enabling staff to deliver care more efficiently by being able to access digitised records when they need it.”
Taking to LinkedIn, the trust thanked colleagues for being “incredible” in helping to mobilise the project, highlighting the work of more than 120 digital champions in supporting their peers and ensuring seamless integration of the system. Floorwalkers will also be on hand “24/7”, it continued, to offer support where required.
Wider trend: EPR and EPR optimisation
For a recent HTN Now session on the topic of EPRs now and in the future, we were joined by digital leaders including Sally Mole, senior digital programme manager – digital portfolio delivery team at The Dudley Group; Keltie Jamieson, CHIO at Bermuda Hospitals Board; and David Newey, digital health expert and executive CDIO. We heard in depth from our panel in terms of their EPR journey, sharing their approach, examples, challenges and lessons learned. We went on to discuss the current position with EPRs, the opportunity, and the current need. Looking ahead, we discussed what the future of EPRs looks like in the short, medium and longer term.
A separate HTN Now panel discussion explored EPR customisations for the frontline and how digital transformation can support the direction set in the 10 Year Health Plan. We discussed optimisation, challenges and key learnings from success stories shared by our experts. Panellists included Doctor Stephen Jones, principal clinical psychologist at Sheffield Children’s Hospital; David Wong, associate professor of health data science and health informatics at Leeds University; Mark Simpson, digital innovation leader at Leeds Community Healthcare; and Michael Odling-Smee, CEO at Aire Innovate.
The board of Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust in its September meeting, welcomed the successful go-live of its Epic EPR, however noted the scale of post-implementation effort required. Following the go-live of the EPR in May, the board stated that its “performance is now recovering”, and “acknowledged the significant operational and data quality disruption following go-live”, noting “the scale of post-implementation effort required to stabilise systems and sustain safety”.
