EHRs: who is in the running?

Alert Life Sciences Computing Portuguese-based Alert's Paper-Free Hospital IT system has been well received by the NHS and the firm, which was formed in 1999, now has around 70 staff working in the UK. "Alert's touch-screen system enables all clinical information to be available electronically, enabling hospital staff to analyse clinical performance and clinical outcomes to improve the quality of patient care," says Laurence Campbell, Alert UK's managing director. The company, which won a national design award in Portugal last November, signed a high-profile deal that same month with Blackpool, Fylde and Wyre Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. The seven-year deal will involve three years migrating to an digital EHR system and is currently being implemented on a pilot basis with the trust's A&E and cardiology departments, with plans to implement the technology in all seven of the trust's sites. Interestingly, Philip Graham, head of IT for the trust, has described Alert as an interim solution, with the long term aim of migrating on to the iSoft Lorenzo platform, although that is not scheduled to go live at the trust until 2017 at the earliest. Agfa Healthcare The Belgian firm, which is best known for its health imaging systems, is a recent starter in the UK's EHR marketplace. This week, it announced at the WoHIT conference in Barcelona that it has installed its first UK installation at the Hospital of St John & Elizabeth in London. The charity hospital, the largest of its type in the UK, has taken the firm's Impax 6.4 picture archive and communications system to allow relevant staff access to radiology images across the campus. The 155-bed hospital's PACS technology is being supplemented by voice recognition platform, which is being used in the radiology department. Hans Vandewyngaerde, Agfa HealthCare's vice president, said that the Impax software can be tailored to any hospital's individual needs, creating great value and return on investment. Orion Health The New Zealand-headquartered firm's Concerto physician portal software is being piloted in an EHR system in two of Northern Ireland's health and social care trusts throughout this year. The one-year pilot programme will see staff able to access patient records through the web-based Concerto platform. Concerto went live at the Belfast City and Ulster hospitals last December and extends the clinical data feed to a number of GP practices. The firm says that the Concerto portal platform delivers many benefits to clinical practice, including improved availability of information at the point of care and a reduction in unnecessary diagnostic testing. Charles Scatchard, Orion Health' newly appointed president, claims that his firm's Concerto platform is now installed at more international sites than any other vendor in the market. CSE Healthcare Systems CSE's RiO care records platform is in active use by more than 40,000 clinical staff across the UK, with London being its central focus under through its position as the capital's standard system for mental health trusts under the National Programme for IT. The firm is headquartered in Sheffield. In February of this year, the company announced a major RiO deal with Hampshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, with staff using a smartcard authentication system to gain access to the NHS Personal Demographics Service and the Choose and Book facility. The system, which took a year to plan and implement, has been rolled out to more than 500 staff in the trust, with plans to expand the facility to all trust sites by the end of this year. According to CSE Healthcare, its technology is also being installed at 25 mental and community health sites in the south of England and by the end of April of this year, NHS Bristol, NHS South Gloucestershire and NHS North Somerset will also have gone live with RiO. InterSystems The US-based firm's main EHR platform, Ensemble, was installed at the Royal Marsden Hospital back in 2007. Since then, the company, which has approaching three decades of experience in the industry, has implemented its technology at a variety of NHS sites including Barts and the London NHS Trust. The firm recently announced is a framework contract with NHS National Services Scotland to supply its TrakCare connected health information system as the new national patient management system for Scotland. The contract, which forms part of a national framework in line with Scotland's eHealth strategy, will allow any health board access to the system and associated modules over the next four years. Initially the five purchasing consortium NHS boards - Ayrshire & Arran, Borders, Grampian, Greater Glasgow & Clyde, and Lanarkshire - will be hooked into Scottish grid. They have signed contracts worth £44m under the deal, which is worth a maximum of £100m. According to Kerry Stratton, the firm's MD, along with existing TrakCare customer NHS Lothian, these boards provide care for 70% of the Scottish population. TPP Leeds-based TPP's SystmOne platform supports a centrally hosted GP, community and child health record. A key feature of the system, which has been installed at approaching 1,200 GP practices across England and Wales, is that just a single patient record exists, and information added to the record is available to all users as soon as it is added. Unusually for an NHS-focused system, the SystmOne platform is also used in prisons and a number of local government sites. Last November the firm installed its 1,000th system at a Leicestershire GP practice, almost a decade after the first site went live in Keighley. According to Andrew Spence, TPP's director, the bulk of systems installed so far in the UK have been under local service provider contracts in the North, Midlands and East of England using partners such as CSC and former local service provider Accenture. First part on Cerner, iSoft and Emis