... to a new PAS

25th April 2014 - Ealing Hospital NHS Trust (EHT) has used Ascribe's integration consultancy services to provide core development work to migrate their clinical systems' interfaces from their existing McKesson "TotalCARE" PAS and "eGate" integration engine to the CSC/Silverlink iCS PAS used by the North West London Hospitals NHS Trust (NWLHT).

Ascribe's Consultancy team was selected by EHT to undertake this critical project based on their proven expertise with complex healthcare integration projects.

To ensure that clinicians would see no change in their access to clinical data, EHT had to replace their current McKesson eGate integration engine with their recently installed InterSystems "Ensemble" TIE (Trust Integration Engine) and migrate the ten operational interfaces. The project's go-live had to be managed in parallel with the migration of the PAS system and data migration to NWLHT's existing CSC/Silverlink iCS PAS.

EHT is using InterSystems Ensemble® integration engine platform to connect the Trusts' clinical systems. Ascribe worked with EHT to provide a robust interface development methodology, interface design, development and deployment using this platform, which will also be used for all future interface development across the trust.

Cost Savings

- EHT chose to move to a single Ensemble® Integration platform to enable a more strategic, flexible and scalable integration architecture, and to consolidate interfaces within the Trusts onto one consistent platform. This consolidated architecture provides EHT with a lower cost of ownership and the integration rationalisation will enhance flow of patient information securely and seamlessly across healthcare settings, ensuring increased safety of clinical data.

- By empowering the EHT IT staff through mentoring and co-working, Ascribe have enabled staff at the Trust to take ownership of future development requirements and implementation; with Ascribe support as and when is needed. This will result in lower support expenditure due to in-house interface support and reduced demand on support staff.

Neil Bridgeman, Assistant Director of Information and Systems at EHT, commented "Our strategic vision in merging the two Trusts has led us to integrate to one PAS and one integration engine; we are expecting to see benefits in improved service, performance and reduced costs through developing our in-house team's skills. We enjoyed working with Ascribe and Intersystems on this project."

Stephen Critchlow, CEO at Ascribe, commented "Ascribe have a strategic goal to integrate healthcare systems to improve clinical safety and performance. We were pleased to work with EHT and look forward to seeing the benefits they realise through their integration work."