National Health Service

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Fujitsu helps to modernise the National Health Service (NHS)

In January 2004, Fujitsu Services in the UK was awarded a multi-year contract to support modernisation in Britain's National Health Service (NHS). The 896-million-pound contract sees Fujitsu as the prime contractor in a Healthcare Alliance that is set to deliver improvements to patients and practitioners across the south of England.

The ambitious modernisation program involves the introduction of electronic patient records throughout the region, integrating existing electronic records where possible, and implementing new systems when appropriate. Called the NHS Care Records Service (NHS CRS), the system revolutionises the way that patient care information is accessed and shared between healthcare professionals. For the first time, information about patients is mobile - just like patients themselves - and doesn't remain in filing stores in the buildings where care or treatment was received.

NHS CRS provides instant access to patient records, diagnostic images and test results 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It allows all authorised front-line healthcare professionals to access improved patient information - basics such as address and date of birth, health and care history, allergies and so on. With all this information at their fingertips, healthcare professionals have greater support in diagnosis and a reduction in their administrative burden. They are also able to make more efficient and appropriate referrals and detect disease clusters or outbreaks earlier. The system also offers patients improved access to the healthcare system and gives them a chance to be more involved in their own care.

A key component of the Fujitsu solution is based on LastWord - an integrated clinical application suite. The IDX application has already been used to great effect in the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Trust in London for the automation of clinical functions in both inpatient and outpatient settings. A key benefit from the LastWord solution is the ability for authorised healthcare staff to gain immediate access to patients' case notes, which are always legible! They can be reached from anywhere in the Trust where staff have access to a computer. Previously it could take hours, and sometimes even days, to locate case notes.

The system has made it possible for nurses to perform tasks which were previously assigned to doctors, such as pre-operative screening, where the clerking questionnaire is backed up with an expert decision support system, allowing nurses to establish the patient's fitness to undergo surgery. This frees doctors from data collection tasks, enabling them to concentrate more on clinical problems.

Consultant Anaesthetist Peter Barnes says: "In any NHS hospital everyone's working under a great deal of pressure, and anything that makes life easier is going to help everyone."

Implementing the NHS CRS is a big job - Fujitsu has assembled an Alliance which brings together healthcare, IT and change and program management expertise from organisations that are each leaders in their own fields. The solution will be phased over several years with completion expected in 2010.