Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust has awarded Stalis Ltd, the Oxford-based specialist Healthcare Information Management Company a seven-year contract to supply a new Patient Administration System (PAS) part of the Stalis flare software suite. This will replace the current McKesson PAS.
The contract for the new Patient Administration System (PAS) provides for associated implementation and the Stalis CareXML data migration and business information continuity services. Stalis flare is powered by Silverlink PAS which is currently operational in 11 NHS Trusts and offers Northumbria very high functionality coupled with proven low risk and an active forward-thinking user group.
Jim Mackey, Chief Executive of Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, said “The implementation of Stalis flare Patient Administration System (PAS) represents a major stage in our Information Management and Technology (IM&T) strategy to build an electronic health record.
“We are pleased to partner with Stalis in this development and with the locally-based team at Silverlink.”
Christine Whitehouse, Managing Director of Stalis Ltd, said: “We are naturally delighted to have been awarded this prestigious contract against fierce competition and we hope that this will be the first of many Trusts replacing ageing patient administration systems and wanting exceptional functionality and value for money in their foundation solutions to take them into the future.
Stalis is responsible for the supply, implementation, training and support as well as data migration and business information continuity in the changeover to the new system. It is planned that the new system will go live in November 2012”.
The PAS will support the Trust’s hospital and community services in North Tyneside and Northumberland, delivering patient registrations, flexible inpatient and outpatient scheduling and act as a base for a wider health record.
The contract follows a rigorous procurement process to select a system which will form a core element of the Trust’s IM&T strategy. This is based on selecting the most appropriate systems for each function which are then integrated through the Single View clinical portal.
Kevin Dickinson, Head of Information Technology, said: “The new system will significantly improve the way we administer information about our patients helping us to provide a high quality service. We are committed to running all of our support services efficiently and the new system represents excellent value for money.”
Stalis flare is the robust, proven and lowest risk solution to provide NHS Trusts with the architecture, tools, technology and applications to create their own EPR / EHR in progressive steps. Building on the Trust’s current investment in information systems, flare allows the gradual replacement of these when needs and funding permit, to take advantage of the latest developments and best value for money solutions
The safe, cost effective and evolutionary growth of an EPR is made possible by the flare architecture and base applications comprising:
Stalis’ CareXML Integrated Patient Record Clinical Repository, complete with an Patient data management browser.
Silverlink’s Patient Administration System – the most NHS compliant and function rich product available today.
ExtraMed’s Patient Flow system offering an advanced and intuitive, clinician led workflow system for Trust-wide real-time patient tracking, facilitating patient safety and reducing length of stay.
CSAM's Clinical Portal offering Trusts the ability to deploy in one unified user platform a solution to present clinicians with a single view across all patient data and provide a uniform means to place orders / requests and receive results.
The advantage for Trusts deciding on a flare Best of Breed approach to EPR is in the flexibility and the opportunity to choose which steps they will take, in their own time; based on need, budget and resource availability. flare delivers a robust solution at the lowest possible risk. It allows Trusts to replace aging operational and information infrastructure with the most function rich and compliant products on the market today; CareXML, Silverlink PAS, ExtraMed Patient Flow System and CSAM Clinical Portal. The flare approach maximises the investments Trusts have already made in departmental systems and enables the seamless Integration of these into a robust platform for the future.
The stalis flare platform creates the first major step to fulfilling a Trust’s need to upgrade their PAS capability to fully meet NHS requirements. It provides a single repository of data to support all patient clinical engagement and allows for wide scale use by clinical staff as the first major step to an EPR.
Existing legacy systems, especially Laboratory, Radiology and those of other key clinical departments can be integrated with flare either through the Trust’s existing Order Communications / Results Reporting software or through the flare Clinical Portal. This Portal offers the Trust the ability to deploy in one unified single user platform a solution to present clinicians with a single view across all patient data.
Once implemented, flare PAS, Patient Flow and Clinical Portal supports the development of care pathways and guidelines. flare can work with Map of Medicine or the more active decision support tools such as Arezzo.
The stalis flare solution offers the Trust the ability to select, in a close partnership with Stalis further departmental and mission critical systems to develop their own EPR. A prime example of this could be ePrescribing for which Stalis flare can perform with either the JAC or Ascribe products and be integrated with the clinical portal.
CareXML's Integrated Patient Record is designed to store medical images and documents against patient records so that these can be viewed either through the CareXML patient browser for patient record management purposes and through the Clinical Portal for clinicians to inspect and gain a comprehensive view of the full patient episode, tests and results.
Stalis flare offers the Trust’s IT team, clinicians and operational managers the opportunity to develop an affordable EPR solution ideally suited to the particular needs of their own organisation and thus ensure a solution fit for purpose in a timescale to suit Trust resources and clinical needs. Further, with increasing pressure on the need to share patient data in a single form across multiple care settings in a locality, Stalis flare offers the Trust a unique means to accomplish this and so create an EPR to support clinical engagement across all NHS services.
To meet the growing demand from Trusts facing the trauma of converting from existing Patient Administration Systems to new PAS/EPR solutions, Stalis has extended its highly successful CareXML data management software and services portfolio to include Business Continuity Reporting.
In moving to new PAS/EPR solutions Trusts have been faced with the prospect of going live on their new systems without being able to fully test mission critical reporting and CDS returns.
The Solution
The CareXML portfolio already combines an end-to-end solution for data extraction, cleansing, consolidation, migration and transformation coupled with a repository for historic patient data that can be permanently available as a back-up of historic patient data after Go-Live. Now with Business Continuity Reporting from Stalis, Trusts can be assured all their mission critical reporting requirements can be met from one fully integrated and proven solution.
Speaking of this development Christine Whitehouse, Stalis Managing Director commented “Stalis has invested over three years of R&D in bringing this new solution to fruition. We now have a single modular solution that allows Trusts to make one investment as part of their move to a new PAS/EPR such that the resources used in migration benefit the Trust across their current and future reporting needs”
Technical Director Peter Gamston added “Our goal was to provide Trusts with a single data management and reporting architecture and thus ensure we offered Trusts both unrivalled value for money as well as the security of business continuity.
Stalis has been selected to supply a Business Intelligence Solution to Dudley and Walsall Mental Health Partnership Trust.
Ian Baines, the Trust’s Finance Director said of the contract “As a Trust formed in 2008 from the mental health services in two PCTs we were looking for a supplier with wide patient information integration experience, delivery capability, quality and Value for Money. Stalis delivered highly in all of these areas. They showed an understanding of our needs and demonstrated a real passion for delivering exemplary solutions in the NHS”.
Neal Lamb, Head of Performance and Planning went on to say “We have a well defined plan to bring together PAS and Clinical Mental Health data from legacy systems in both Dudley and Walsall and migrate these eventually to Lorenzo. Stalis clearly understands the needs of NHS Trusts exceptionally well and has shown it has delivered excellent solutions in the past. Their CareXML solution provides a window to the Integrated Patient Record and also offers us true business continuity in the data migration process. This in effect de-risks the project and that was good news to everyone concerned.”
“CareXML is rapidly gaining a significant market footprint” added Christine Whitehouse, Stalis’ Managing Director, “ Over the past year or so we have won a number of large long term deals with Trusts who have recognised that there is so much more to Data management than buying a data warehouse and dashboard tools. With most Trust undergoing PAS and other system changes they have realised they need a single solution that will see them through from data extraction/cleansing and migration to full enterprise wide reporting – in fact business continuity, and that is what CareXML has been designed to deliver".