Lee Rickles, head of innovation at Humber NHS Foundation Trust, says the implementation has been a huge success. He said: "We hit scope, we hit timescales and we hit budget, there are very, very few projects in the NHS that can say that they have achieved that, so now we are looking to move things forward."
Clinical engagement has been key to the success of the project. Clinicians have been involved throughout the entire process and Humber continues to involve its clinical, administrative, management and support services teams in the wider roll out of the system.
Rickles added: "We know that the success of this implementation was largely dependent on the people involved, the clinical buy-in and the demand for a system that enables the organisation to operate far more seamlessly. We are meeting with each service area, looking at how they use Lorenzo and how it can be enhanced to support our staff and patients even further."
The project has been critical in improving the way that healthcare professionals access information about their patients. Lorenzo gives users access to real-time information securely from a single source in any place at anytime through PCs and mobile devices. This has led to substantial time-savings, especially for new patients.
By adding modules such as electronic care plans the trust will be able to define its own care plans and templates, which will reduce duplication, provide a more structured way of planning, speed up processes and allow the plans to be linked to assessments. In addition the plans can form the building blocks for multi-resource scheduling and integrated care pathways.
Karen Warwick, senior nurse for child and adolescent mental health services and clinical champion for the Lorenzo Project at the trust added: "We are also particularly excited about being the first to deploy the day care module, which allows us to plan and clearly view day attender patients so we can prepare accordingly and manage those individuals more effectively when they are here."
Further down the line, the organisation will also look to implement Lorenzo e-prescribing and advanced bed management.
Rickles concluded: "Every implementation has its challenges but Lorenzo has been through a huge development cycle and it is one of, if not the only, system that has been built in partnership with the NHS.
"It's proven, robust and it is a modern clinical system. When you utilise everything that is available through Lorenzo, I would go as far to say it's probably the best mental health system there is in the market."
About Humber NHS Foundation Trust
Humber NHS Foundation Trust provides mental health, learning disability, community and addictions services to people from Hull and the East Riding. The trust also provides specialist mental health services to people from across the UK.