Foundation Trust revives £2m e-records project

The trust is seeking to procure an information system, with an estimated cost of up to £2m, which would allow electronic patient records to be created and used by staff across the organisation.

The move follows in the wake of a failed pilot by the trust of e-records software Lorenzo, one of the central e-records systems promoted by the National Programme for IT.

MPs on a cross-party Parliamentary committee this month described plans for a national e-records scheme as “unworkable”.

The Public Accounts Committee criticised the Department of Health’s attempts to create an electronic care records system, which aimed to make a single record of every patient accessible across the NHS, and recommended the project be scrapped altogether as it is fragmented, late and over budget.

It concluded that the remainder of the project’s £7bn budget could be used to construct a superior system.

A Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Foundation Trust spokeswoman confirmed that plans for a shared network of patient records were being put on the back burner. But she said it was still necessary for NHS organisations to develop an e-record system.

“While the government is not pursuing a centrally imposed IT system, it is quite clear that all local trusts need an electronic record system of their own,” said the spokeswoman.

“This system is not going to be shared with other trusts; it is for our own use. If you think about the scale, the hugeness of the NHS, it is pretty difficult to implement a shared scheme.”

Acknowledging the failure of the recently criticised NHS patient record system, she added: “We were piloting the Lorenzo system, but that fell over. We are now going to replace this with one we are more confident about.”