The implementation, testing and go-live of the solution was undertaken by a joint team from WWL and Orion Health over the course of just three months, from April to July 2007. The system is live across all WWL sites and full enterprise roll-out is continuing.

The clinical workstation at WWL provides secure access to a unified view of electronic patient information across the Trust, and is currently in use in 35 wards, with around 1,000 registered users and up to 100 users accessing the system at any time.

The deployment of Orion Health's Concerto clinical portal is a key step in WWL's long-term ICT strategy to become a "future-enabled" trust. Concerto provides the user interface for the web-based clinical workstation that can be used by clinical staff across all WWL's sites, as well as in primary care settings.

"Concerto provided an extremely flexible framework for this project," said Tony Rich, Head of IM&T at WWL. "Concerto made migration and integration of data very simple, and allowed us to implement, test and roll out the clinical workstation very rapidly. In addition, the Orion Health architecture has provided us with a solid foundation on which we can easily add new functionality and integrate with other clinical systems over time to meet the rapidly growing needs of the Trust."

"Because Concerto is browser-based, it has zero footprint on client machines, and allows WWL to quickly add new data and order sets as we expand the clinical workstation into the future."

The clinical workstation currently offers access to lab results, ability to create TTO discharge summaries, and access to referrals. 100 medical secretaries at the Trust are using the workstation to create clinic letters.

The next planned phase of roll-out of the workstation is to make the portal available to local GP practices during 2007, who will be given role-based access to clinical data about their patients. This will provide GPs with a composite view of patient information from both the acute and primary care settings.

Among specific plans for next 12 months include the deployment of a rapid patient discharge tool, electronic drug boards for prescribing and dispensing on the ward, pilot of selected workstation functions on handheld devices.

WWL also use Orion Health's Rhapsody Integration Engine for electronic clinical messaging between information systems.

Orion Health's Clinical Integration Framework is a software platform for creating integrated electronic health records across organisations and regions of all sizes. The Framework enhances an organisation's existing I.T. infrastructure, and combines seamless user-facing access to data with advanced integration of back-end systems.

Orion Health will be demonstrating the Clinical Integration Framework at Booth # 400 at the World of Health I.T. Conference and Exhibition in Vienna, Austria, 22nd -24th October, 2007.

About Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Trust
Wrightington, Wigan & Leigh NHS Trust is a major acute trust serving the people of Wigan and Leigh. Innovative and forward thinking, the trust dedicated to providing the best possible healthcare for the local population of over 300,000.

The trust is committed to designing services around the needs of patients and for patients to be cared for as close to their home as possible. Operating across four hospital sites, a state-of-the-art outpatients centre as well as working from offices at Bryan House and Buckingham Row in Wigan town centre, the trust has over 800 inpatient beds and invests around £190 million each year in a broad range of highly regarded general and specialist acute services. For more information, visit: http://www.wiganleigh.nhs.uk/

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About Orion Health
Orion Health's easy-to-use solutions and applications improve patient care and clinical decision making by providing integrated health data in a single, unified view. By enhancing existing healthcare information systems, Orion Health's Rhapsody integration engine, Concerto clinical portal, and workflow solutions provide healthcare workers with easy access to patient data and trends, and reduce errors and omissions by streamlining information transfer.

Worldwide, Orion Health is implementing health information communities involving over 35 million patients with tens of thousands of active users. Orion Health's partners include leading health system integrators and IT vendors such as Accenture, IBM, Oracle Corporation and others. Orion Health has more than 1,000 clients around the world, including University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, the Ministry Of Health And Consumer Protection of the Balearic Islands (IB-Salut), the Ministry of Health of Valencia, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). More information can be found at www.orionhealth.com.