Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust (LGT) was formed in 2013, providing NHS services for local people in Lewisham, Greenwich, Bexley and other parts of South East London. The Trust is responsible for NHS services at Lewisham Hospital, Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Greenwich and 11 other health centres in Lewisham plus they provide some services at Queen Mary’s Hospital in Sidcup.
The Trust builds on strengths of teams in Lewisham and Greenwich, with the ambition of creating a single unified service delivering safe and sustainable services to this large South London catchment area. As a result of the mergers between the Trust, hospitals and centres, LGT had systems which needed to be consolidated into a single service to make efficiency savings.
In order to consolidate systems, the Trust first had the foresight to plan a single unified enterprise service bus that connected all systems at both Greenwich and Lewisham sites. The solution chosen was InterSystems’ latest HealthShare Health Connect platform, featuring the latest healthcare standards such as FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources), with the option of adding future modules such as the SMSP (Spine Mini Services Provider) module could be added at a later date.
Once this was achieved, then the platform could be used to implement further economies of scale by ensuring Trust wide sharing of common demographics, orders and results datasets.
The Challenge
The Trust were having to fund and resource two separate integration platforms and supporting teams – InterSystems Ensemble and Rhapsody, whilst rolling out its Cerner EPR system to both sites. Most of the hospitals key administrative and clinical processes had to be protected and enabled including:
- Electronic patient records
- Clinical document sharing with GPs across the South London area
- Pathology and radiology orders and results reporting inside
- Pharmacy
- Theatre scheduling
- Asset tracking and cost Management
A significant middleware upgrade had to take place in a climate where the NHS is actively trying to introduce change while reducing costs. The Trust needed an integration partner who could be trusted to plan and carry out this complex middleware platform consolidation, without any disruption to existing clinical services at all sites and in close collaboration with the in-house integration and infrastructure management team.
The Solution
Integrella won the competitive tender on the basis of our wealth of experience in performing this type of transition and on our track record in Ensemble solution delivery and support. It took just under a year to complete the consolidated merge of all existing application interfaces over to the new platform. This work included a full backloading data migration to the new Cerner HIE, a region-wide go-live of the Docman GP document sharing system, and also interfaces with systems like Omicell and IFIT. The programme could not have been completed without the use of Integrella’s Transition Testing ToolkitTM.
Since assuming responsibility for the TIE, Integrella has worked seamlessly with Trust integration management team to provide speedy resolutions to incidents raised on our support portal while working to a trademark ITIL model.
All of this work was delivered within budget and aimed at achieving greater operational efficiency by leveraging technology, the main benefits Integrella brings to the Trust. Integrella provides platform and solution support to reduce downtime and costs through swift resolution of issues, as identification of cost effective remediation options.
About Integrella
Integrella is a specialist integration services company supplying round-the-clock support to some of the largest NHS Trusts. We have extensive experience working in the UK Healthcare sector, as well as in the Public Sector, Financial Services, Retail and Utilities sectors. Our expert services include consulting, development, delivery, support and resourcing. We deliver our solutions by partnering with top vendors in the industry.
The pressure is on every organisation to be more connected, more convenient, more compelling and more social. These needs drive digital transformation. Integrella can help you realise the potential in what you already own and set you on the right digital track.