Kettering General Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has awarded a 10-year contract to System C to supply an integrated clinical record and administration system. 

The Trust’s aim is to improve care provided to patients by delivering mobile clinical and decision-making support to clinicians, improving the flow of patients through the main c.600-bed hospital and outlying clinics and fully digitising the patient record. It will be doing this by adopting System C’s blueprint for full hospital computerisation. 

Kettering General Hospital provides acute healthcare services for the people of North Northamptonshire and South Leicestershire, and treats approximately 377,000 people a year. 

Andy Callow, chief digital information officer at Kettering, said:

We have put in place an ambitious digital programme to improve both the patient and staff experience.  Implementation of the EPR is one of the key enablers of our digital journey.

Kettering will be building on its existing Medway PAS in a demanding 18-month deployment. It will start by deploying the company’s Vitals e-observations and CareFlow Connect care co-ordination software, with a go-live planned later this year.   

Other System C products included in the contract include e-prescribing, clinical narrative and care planning, and the maternity personal health record. 

Kettering will also be deploying System C’s clinical workspace, which gives clinicians most of the information they need for a patient in one place, from their smartphone or desktop. This will provide a single source for most aspects of clinical working, including prescribing, observations, assessments, results, orders, care pathways and communication, PACS and EDMS. It also has team-based screens which summarise current patients, tasks, planned activity, outstanding results and so on.

The Trust will be installing MediViewer™, the electronic document management solution from IMMJ Systems, which is fully interoperable with System C’s EPR software. This seamless integration enables clinicians to access the patient’s historical medical records directly from within the EPR user interface and in context with the current patient view. Clinicians on the move will also be able to access MediViewer™ via any mobile device, providing an intuitive, fast, touch-screen experience that has been a proven driver of excellent user adoption of the system.

It will also be replacing its existing theatres software with the System C theatres offering, developed by Bluespier.   

Markus Bolton, joint chief executive of System C, said:

The System C blueprint is all about helping our customers achieve a rapid increase in digital maturity to become fully computerised and paper-free hospitals integrated with the surrounding care community. We are delighted that Kettering General Hospital has joined this programme.

Stuart van Rooyen, managing director of Bluespier, commented:

Bluespier is delighted to be part of this exciting digital project in partnership with System C. The theatres element of this installation will help improve resource scheduling, patient tracking and theatre utilisation, supporting Kettering Hospital with providing the best possible outcomes for patients even in the most demanding environment.

Max Smith, chief revenue officer of IMMJ Systems, added:

We are delighted to be a part of Kettering Hospital’s digital programme in partnership with System C.  The speed, ease of use and powerful functionality of MediViewer™ will play an integral part in improving the hospital’s staff and patient experience at the point of care as well as increasing the Trusts digital maturity.

The System C blueprint is a hospital EPR and care community-wide solution. It consists of a PAS and clinical systems including prescribing, results, orders, alerting, decision support, handover, noting, task management, e-observations and messaging. 

In addition, the care community element includes shared records, care plans, cross-community messaging and referral; a patient portal and patient engagement solutions; population health management and business intelligence.