Customer stories
Integrating hospital systems to improve patient care
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Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (“Blackpool”) has worked with Optum (formerly EMIS) integration experts to ensure seamless interfacing between their Optum Hospital Pharmacy system and their ALERT® Electronic Healthcare Record System (EHR).
In order to support efficient and safe patient care, Blackpool engaged with Optum's integration experts to determine the most effective method of integration of their pharmacy and EHR system. This required both business, and patient care requirements to be translated into a safe and effective end-to-end design.
Integration: tailored to the trust
Optum arranged a number of workshops at the trust to define a clear definition of the integration project requirements. The workshops helped identify that enabling strength switching (and similar flexibility at the dispensing stage) was of great importance to clinicians to reduce drug costs and improve stock management. As the ALERT ePMA solution did not support this function it became important to ensure staff had the flexibility within both systems to enable this function from the Optum system.
Drug database considerations
To ensure a successful integration, medication information needed to be coded and safely transmitted between both systems. It was agreed between all parties to use the NHS dictionary of medicines and devices (“dm+d”) and create local coding written for any medicines not covered by the dm+d.
Robust architecture
Optum carried out further discussions with Blackpool and ALERT to ensure an agreed platform was designed to support the interface between the systems. From these discussions, Optum identified potential risks with Blackpool’s existing Trust Integration Engine (TIE) and ensured that all components would be brought up to a minimum level of robustness for all aspects of the process.
Plan for Implementation
After a solution was agreed upon, all parties clearly defined their deliverables and a realistic timetable of activities to be undertaken. This enabled everyone to be clear on what could and could not be delivered within the scope, setting realistic expectations and transparency between Optum, ALERT and Blackpool.
The work that has been done to date in order to develop and design the integrated interface, has been due to an effective partnership approach between ALERT, EMIS (now Optum) and the Trust.”
This partnership has created a safer, more effective integrated system throughout the trust.