University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust (UH Bristol) has selected System C to supply and implement its Medway patient administration and electronic patient record (PAS/EPR) system across all of its hospitals. 

The Trust is a leading research centre, the region's largest provider of medical and dental teaching and is one of the largest acute NHS Trusts in the country, with an income last year of £507m.   It employs over 7,500 people, delivering over 100 different clinical services from a group of nine hospitals in the heart of the city. 

The selection was made after a rigorous six month Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) procurement process involving many suppliers.  Solutions purchased by UH Bristol include PAS, Accident & Emergency, maternity, theatres, the clinical data collection module and the data warehouse and reporting system, Medway Business Intelligence.  System C's portal product, Medway Connect, will be used to integrate numerous third party and Trust-developed applications.  This includes integration with Medicode and Sunquest ICE.  

The contract also includes a comprehensive deployment service including data migration, localisation, integration, training, testing, floor walking and seven years' support. Medway will replace the Trust's existing Patient Administration System suite (HP-EDS Swift).

Stephen Hann, clinical systems programme director for UH Bristol, said: "We chose Medway because we are a large and complex Trust and we needed a strategic product that could be configured to meet the needs of all of our users.  Medway is a modern system, built specifically for the NHS, and is feature-rich and intuitive to use. This is a step-change in PAS and clinical functionality for the Trust and will allow us to realise many benefits for patients and staff.

"Many hospital staff were involved in the evaluation process and their feedback showed that they were overwhelmingly in favour of Medway. Our staff worked very hard on this procurement and I am very pleased to have such a successful outcome", he added.  "We are now looking forward to working collaboratively with System C's teams in partnership for many years to come."

Markus Bolton, director of sales and strategy for System C, commented: "We are delighted to have been chosen by UH Bristol on a project of this size and complexity. The Trust is pragmatic, enthusiastic and knowledgeable, and we anticipate a busy and enjoyable deployment.   
"Of course deployments like these are all about the benefits and the work to embed the system into the fabric of the Trust and the drive out of those benefits will start on day one."

Dr Ian Denley, System C CEO, said: "We have spent many years developing the latest .NET Medway product and building the capacity and capability to deploy it in volume. Being selected by UH Bristol is a huge vote of confidence for our people and for Medway." 

Background

The UH Bristol deployment consists of:

• Medway Patient Administration System (PAS). Functionality includes master patient index, inpatients, outpatients, day care and case note tracking. The core PAS solution will be required to cover, amongst other functions, patient registration, in-patient care, waiting lists, out-patients, coding in all statutory defined formats, case note tracking, bed management, clinical data collection, referral to treatment pathways, choose and book compliance, audit reports, operational and management reporting, and comprehensive data extraction facilities for all other reporting purposes.

Other modules procured include:

• Medway Accident & Emergency: a clinical emergency department system

• Theatres: scheduling and operative documentation

• Medway Business Intelligence: integrated data warehouse and reporting tools

• Medway Connect: integrated messaging and portal functionality offering a single view and update service for the Trust-wide patient record 

• Medway CST (Clinical Support Tools): allows the Trust to design and implement its own screens for collecting clinical information on each patient in support of specific speciality requirements (e.g. cancer details)

• Medway Maternity: a clinical maternity information system to be used by both acute and community clinical staff

This is the fourth major trust-wide contract for Medway in the last year. The company announced earlier this month that Gateshead Health NHS Foundation Trust had chosen Medway as its core strategic PAS and EPR system, in another seven-year contract, following Royal Devon & Exeter NHS Foundation Trust.