Mid and South Essex Foundation Trust and Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust have announced their partnership for a £65 million contract agreement with Oracle Health.
The agreement is for an EPR system aiming to improve clinician access to real-time patient information and enhance patient experience by preventing them “having to re-tell their health or care history whenever they see a health professional”.
According to a trusts, the EPR system is expected to launch in 2026/27, and “will build on current digital investments to create a single patient record system across hospitals, mental health and community services”, supporting the trust’s commitments to joined-up care.
MSEFT and EPUT will be working together on the new system’s design and implementation, to ensure that it meets the needs of patients, service users, and clinicians across the region. Dr Matt Sweeting, executive medical director for Mid and South Essex ICB, welcomed the announcement as “exciting news for our patients, healthcare professionals and communities”.
Zephan Trent, executive lead for strategy and transformation for both trusts, said the move “will enhance co-ordination and collaboration among clinicians to aid faster decisions that will further improve the care we provide to our patients and their families”.
Electronic patient records wider trend
For a recent HTN Now panel discussion on the topic of managing EHR complexity, we were joined by Paul Charnley, former CIO and chair of the NHS Blueprinting Programme, and Mike Hardman, principal engineer and EPR technology lead at Aire Logic, who shared some of their insight and experience on overcoming challenges around EHR design and implementation. Mike took us through some of the challenges around EHR complexity, saying, “the EHR is an extremely important and high pressure piece of technology – it’s touched on by nearly every function and used at every stage of treatment, as well as offering that access to records which is foundational to providing good care. It’s integral it’s delivered in a timely and accurate manner.”
An article by Gary Mooney at InterSystems highlighted the case for positive user adoption as a key measure of EPR success, looking at user satisfaction, meaningful user engagement, articulating solution value, and more. “The positive and sustained end user adoption of an EPR solution is not only a key insight as to the success of a deployment programme,” according to Gary, “it is also mandatory if the EPR is to continue to adapt and evolve to maximise longer-term return on investment through the delivery of service and persona-level benefits and outcomes.”
In the last couple of weeks, Shropshire Health and Wellbeing Board published an update on progress toward Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin ICS’s digital strategy, highlighting “key accomplishments” since March 2024 including the rollout of an EPR, advancements in digital diagnostics, and progress around virtual care and remote monitoring. One of the key areas of progress the report identifies is around leadership and collaboration, highlighting that establishing “strong digital leadership” across the ICB has been “instrumental”.
Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust also awarded a £16.7 million EPR contract to Meditech via the NHS LPP Clinical Digital Solutions Framework Agreement. The contract will run from 30 October 2024 for an initial period of ten years, with the option to extend for a further five, making the maximum contract length a total of 15 years.
