Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust has begun an open procurement process with interested suppliers for the future Electronic Patient Record solution that meets MFT requirements. MFT is now the largest Trust in the UK and is responsible for running a family of nine hospitals across six separate sites, providing a wide range of services from comprehensive local general hospital care through to highly specialised regional and national services.A future EPR solution needs to meet the whole of the Trust’s specialist and complex needs.
The future EPR will provide an integrated Trust-wide electronic patient record solution, which will include patient administration functionality.
This is an exciting step along MFT’s journey to develop an innovative and digitally advanced EPR solution which will:
- Improve the patient experience, for example, by reducing the need for patients to give the same information to different member of staff and reducing delays in accessing paper medical records
- Enable staff to access the information they need to care for patients wherever and whenever they need it
- Support staff to work more efficiently and free up time for face-to-face patient care
- Improve patient safety by alerting potential medication error, allergies, healthcare-acquired infection risks
- Help to improve the quality of care provided through clinical decision support and reducing unwarranted clinical variation in treatment.
MFT recognises the importance of continuing to ensure existing products support the services it delivers during the procurement and implementation stages and it has developed roadmaps to support this and the readiness for the new EPR.
Whilst the tender value is a maximum of £400m this includes contract extensions beyond the initial 15 year term and would support any future reconfiguration of healthcare in Greater Manchester. MFT expects the initial contracted solution to cost less than this. Funding has been applied for an initial £50m capital through the NHS Independent Trust Financing Facility.
As the procurement process is currently underway, we are not able to give further information at this point.