Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust has gone live with Oracle Cerner EPR across its hospitals and other sites including Barking Community Hospital and St George’s Health and Wellbeing Hub, as “the last acute trust in London to go digital”.
Plans to introduce the £44 million EPR were first shared in late 2023, with the trust highlighting the importance of collaboration with the team at Barts Health, who completed an earlier implementation of the same system.
On the go-live, chief executive, Matthew Trainer, commented: “So far, the roll out has been running to time and is largely going as we had expected. We have had problems but have been able to fix most of them as they have come up. It will take weeks or months for some of our services to start to see the full benefits and for us to be confident that we have managed this change properly. But we have made a promising start. I have already seen examples this week of staff delivering better, safer care as a result of our new system.
“Lots of our staff have had to work incredibly hard to get it up and running. They are adjusting to a new system while preparing for a strike by resident doctors. We have also had to cope with the impact of a couple of the busiest weeks in A&E on record, after our busiest October ever and a very difficult start to November. I know staff and patients have had to put up with long waits, crowding and corridor care and I am sorry about this. I’d like to thank everyone visiting our sites for their patience when things have taken longer than usual.”
BHRUT’s annual plan for 2025/26 outlined hopes for the go-live to take place in September 2025, following an “extremely tough year financially, with less income and the need to make £61m of savings”. In September, however, it announced that the go-live would be delayed, with Matthew Trainer, chief executive, stating: “It’s a massive undertaking which we need to get right and it’s why we’ve moved the launch date from this month. We want to ensure everyone has the right training and we’ve addressed any technical issues.”
Wider trend: EPR and EPR optimisation
For a recent HTN Now panel discussion on EPR best practices, we welcomed experts from across health and care, including Sally Mole, digital programme manager at The Dudley Group NHS FT, Fhezan Ashraf, clinical configuration manager at The Dudley Group NHS FT, Stacey Spence, EPR programme manager at Medway NHS FT and Hayley Grafton, CNIO at University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust. The discussion began with wider introductions, where each of our experts gave an overview of their own go-live projects before moving onto post go-live best practices, exploring key learnings and challenges when it comes to engaging the workforce and measuring adoption.
A recent 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.
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.
