Somerset NHS Foundation Trust has begun to use the OPENeP e-prescribing and medications (ePMA) management solution from Better across its surgical services.
The trust, which was formed on 1 April 2020 when the Somerset Partnership and Taunton and Somerset NHS foundation trusts merged, has taken the step as part of a plan to integrate key systems using the Better openEHR platform.
It ran a trial in its Eliot Ward for elderly care from late 2018, then began to look at its surgical directorate late last year. The project went live just as the trust started to care for Covid-19 patients.
Andrew Forrest, the trust’s chief information officer, said: “We decided to pursue an open platform and portal based approach to developing an electronic patient record.
“This offered several advantages, such as allowing us to create a central record and clinical data repository that we can use to feed the best of suite clinical systems that we are adding according to our needs and resources.
“OPENeP is an important part of the mix, and it is great to see that the system is now live and delivering the benefits of closed loop electronic prescribing and medication management to our staff.”
The trust is now planning to deploy the system across its emergency department, medical admissions areas, and medical wards. This is planned to go live shortly as the trust remodels care pathways following its response to the coronavirus outbreak.
