London North West Healthcare trust and the Hillingdon Hospitals FT have signed a ten year, £40 million deal to implement the Cerner EPR.

This is in line with the North West London Integrated Care System's draft commissioning strategy which states that the four acutes are "working towards one acute group model".

To facilitate greater interoperability, the trusts will join Imperial College Healthcare trust and Chelsea and Westminster FT, both Cerner clients already sharing a domain themselves.

The two latest trusts to join are also recruiting several senior joint roles to work on the EPR roll-out and digital integration between the trusts.

WHY IT MATTERS

The aim is to create one acute group model that will function in parallel to the system's single commissioning group under a single community and mental health unit.

The shared EPR system will allow the 2.5 million patients registered with GPs in North West London to have a single record with their medical history, which is available for clinicians to view at any of the hospital sites.

Although the system's acutes have been collaborating on clinical services to support the roll-out of the the EPR system, this will be among the first time all providers have adopted the same EPR system and enabled sharing of patient information to this extent.  

The EPR will also support the consolidation of IT-services across the integrated care system.  

THE LARGER CONTEXT

Last month, Great North Care Record and Cerner achieved 'first-of-type' for unscheduled care with a number of milestones, including enabling 8,000 care professionals to access records in Cerner's HIE. 

Cerner also recently made a move into the life insurance space by collaborating with New York Life to provide secure access to EHRs.

ON THE RECORD

Distie Profit, Cerner's UK managing director, told Healthcare IT News: “We are excited by this ground-breaking partnership to improve care quality and efficiency across northwest London. 

“The benefits that will come from these four organisations sharing an EHR will put them in an advantageous position to enhance the way care is designed and delivered across the region, and brings them one step closer to delivering the collective ambitions of the ICS.”