The Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust Awards its Document and Records Management Project to Kainos

Compliance, efficiency, a reduced reliance on paper based patient records, and an overall improvement in patient care, drives The Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust’s Document and Records Management project

London & Belfast, November 17th, 2009 – Kainos, (www.kainos.com) a leading IT consulting company, has today announced that it has been selected by The Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust to deliver its document and records management solution based on Electronic Document & Records Management (EDRM) technologies. The decision to award the contract to Kainos was reached following rigorous qualification stages (initiated under the Catalist procurement model) that collated the opinion of more than 400 members of the Trust’s clinical and administrative staff. 

The Trust currently has more than half a million case notes both on and off-site and it operates across a 45-acre site. The sheer storage of this quantity of paper based case notes (bearing in mind that each case note file may have hundreds of documents), its security and management, is unimaginable. The retrieval and management of notes so that they are with the right clinician in the right department at the right time, is time consuming and difficult.

A key component of the new EDRM solution is the establishment of a high-end scanning operation on the Trust site. The scanning operation, which has been jointly set up by Kainos and the Trust, will be managed by Trust staff and will enable the scanning of case notes required for clinic appointments and also case notes for all new patients. The scanning operation has been sized to allow the bulk scanning of an initial high priority 40,000 existing patient case notes. Back scanning of existing case notes on the Trust premises removes any concerns around patient confidentiality, which could potentially arise with offsite scanning.   
    
Although its early ambitions were focused on reducing reliance on paper based case notes, enabling simultaneous, multi-user access, improving efficiency of clinicians’ time and patient care; it was the process of electronically creating patient discharge summaries and delivering them to the General Practitioners within 24 hours of the discharge, that came to the fore as key to delivering a major and very immediate benefit from the system. The electronic production and transmission of discharge summaries within 24 hours becomes mandatory next year, and is one of a number of key targets for all NHS Trusts from April 2010.

“At the time we were selecting a partner to implement our EDRM system, Kainos demonstrated a deep understanding of EDRM technologies and processes and their experience in managing large-scale projects was evident to everyone who met them,” commented, Neil Turnbull, Head of Programme Delivery, in the Information Management and Technology department of The Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust. “They know EDRM technology, systems and services and we understand healthcare and patient care. Blending these skills and knowledge bases is making for a very successful outcome.”

The Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust’s initial impression of Kainos is proving correct as Neil explains, “We have an excellent working relationship with the Kainos team which is evidenced by the fact that the project has gone very smoothly and we are poised to roll out the first phase of our EDRM solution within the next month.”

The Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust’s EDRM solution is based on records management technology from Autonomy; Autonomy Records Management™, an advanced retention and disposition solution which Kainos has worked with many times to underpin its large scale EDRM projects. Autonomy’s unique approach combines enterprise scale records management with IDOL’s meaning based computing architecture to largely automate the process of classification, provisioning, retention and disposition.

Deirdre O’Neill is head of ECM at Kainos and adds, “We are delighted to be working with The Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust to deliver their next generation of EDRM. Over time the EDRM solution will become a Trust-wide system upon which clinicians and other hospital staff will come to rely on for effective and efficient patient care.” Deirdre continues, “Projects such as these are non trivial and Kainos is acutely aware of the massive cultural change that will be required by The Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust for this project to be a success. We believe that together we can overcome these challenges and are looking forward to its success furthering our footprint in the NHS and making electronic document and records management a reality for many Trusts to come.”

About The Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust
The Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust is one of the largest general hospitals in East Anglia and provides healthcare services to nearly half a million people.  More information can be found at www.ipswichhospital.nhs.uk