Ashtead, UK – Wednesday, 25th November 2009 - News that Kingston Hospital NHS Trust is planning to migrate to a totally new electronic patient records (EPR) system at the end of November has been welcomed by BridgeHead Software, the healthcare data management specialist.   "The phasing out of the Clinicom system that Kingston has been using signals a milestone in the development of a more responsive electronic health records system for Londoners," said Tony Cotterill, BridgeHead's chief executive.   "As a key NHS Trust in South-West London, Kingston supports the health needs of around 320,000 people with more than 500 hospital beds and approaching 3,000 direct and indirect staff," he added.   According to Cotterill, the migration of any NHS Trust to a new EPR system is a major step, but particularly so for Kingston, as this is the first one to go live in around 18 months.  

As a result, he said, all the eyes of clinical and service managers with Trusts across England and Wales will be on the migration process, as effective EPR systems will form the lynchpin of NHS IT system as the UK's national health service enters a new decade.   BridgeHead's experience in assisting over 1,000 healthcare organisations on both sides of the Atlantic to successfully manage the data which underpins cost-effective EPR-based systems leads Cotterill to advise any Trust to do its homework when considering an all-electronic health records platform migration or in fact any system migration of this magnitude.   Key considerations:   1)    Any migration must be supported with a potential to roll back to multiple points in time to ensure no loss of service as the migration proceeds 2)    Trusts need to prioritise any scanning required for paper documents by focusing on the most used and current information and then progress as far back in history as is economically viable 3)    During the migration process, Trusts are wise to factor in a vendor agnostic approach to managing all patient data to ensure there is no future vendor lock-in. It’s likely that data may need to be accessed or moved to other systems in the not too distant future 4)    Trusts should view the move to an EPR system as an opportunity allowing them to take a leaner, greener approach to storing digital records and in so doing pre-empt pressures in the future to be a greener user of information technology