Through over 330 hours of focused work on engagement and gap analysis, we identified and consolidated the requirements for implementing a common Electronic Patient Record (EPR) system to enable seamless health care.

Background

Dudley Integrated Health and Care (DIHC) had already taken significant steps to integrate services, but were ambitious to push this further. An integrated Electronic Patient Record (EPR) system would be a major part of their drive towards much more seamless care for patients and efficiency for clinicians.

The Common EPR programme of work began in 2021/22 with support from NHS Midlands and Lancashire’s Digital Transformation team. The first phase to identify and define requirements has been completed, and the second phase involving the implementation is due to commence imminently.

Action

To establish DIHC’s requirements, we undertook a series of interviews and workshops with service leads, frontline clinicians, partners and other stakeholders. Building on this intelligence, we turned the identified requirements into a detailed, richer system specification.

We looked deeper by performing a gap analysis against the incumbent core clinical system supplier to establish and identify:

• how their solution could fulfil the requirements
• which requirements it could fulfil
• the implication of the gaps and the roadmap to fill these.

The team provided strategic EPR options and an executive recommendation for the project, before establishing the foundations for a Common EPR Business Case spanning primary care, mental health, children’s and adult community services.

Impact

In a truly collaborative effort, a total of 70 services and teams throughout Dudley were engaged in this project.

From October 2021 to March 2022, our Digital Transformation team spent over 330 hours of focused work on targeted service engagement, discovery workshops and interviews, documentation, follow-ups, validation and requirement consolidation and traceability activities.

The discovery process involved more than 115 NHS colleagues through more than 110 meetings, interviews and workshops. This ensured that service leads, frontline clinicians, partners and other stakeholders were at the forefront of defining what the Common EPR would look like.

We gathered 3,742 requirements through this process. These were consolidated into 843 individual EPR requirements before being categorised and prioritised.

Our iterative, analytical and fully traceable EPR Gap Analysis process involved:

• Fit and gap assessments with the incumbent system supplier
• Categorisation of requirements (e.g. Fully Met, Partially Met, Not Met) with supporting action plans
• Dashboard level analytics for communication across a wide range of stakeholder groups
• Emerging themes and barriers to progress consolidated into four strategic areas of concern for executive review and steer.

We completed a digital tools operational review for DIHC Primary Care Clinical Support Services in parallel to the Common EPR process, and established an action plan for operational system improvements.

“I was impressed with the way the team developed and implemented a programme structure which enabled a complex set of requirements to be delivered. The outcome of the EPR programme has enabled the organisation to understand the requirements of individual services, address gaps with current system suppliers and identify potential solutions for the future EPR. Thanks to everyone that has supported this project.”

Matthew Gamage,
Acting Director of Finance,
Dudley Integrated Health and Care