A new, safer computer system will benefit more than three million NHS hospital patients across Merseyside, Cheshire and North Wales. The software, developed in the UK specifically for the NHS, will cut paperwork and reduce the risk of mix-ups over prescriptions.
The North Mersey Heath Informatics Service (HIS), a NHS shared service providing IM&T services to NHS Trusts across North Mersey, is working in partnership with Trust colleagues to support the implementation of a pioneering electronic system to improve the quality and safety of prescribing in three of Liverpool’s key hospital Trusts.
The Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration (EPMA) system will improve patient safety by reducing the potential for prescribing and administration errors that are known to result in adverse events in patient care.
The programme will be delivered and administered across the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospital, Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital and Aintree University Hospital Foundation NHS Trusts which will be the first of the three Trusts to go live.
JAC, the UK’s leading medicine management systems specialist, is providing the software and will help North Mersey HIS with the implementation.
JAC chief executive Robert Tysall-Blay and Kelly Mann, president and CEO of US-based Mediware, JAC’s parent company, will be in Liverpool this week to meet with Senior Management Team colleagues from the respective NHS Trusts as well as the Director of North Mersey HIS, and to visit the three Trusts where it will be employed.
Mr Tysall-Blay commented: “The hospitals of the North Mersey HIS consortium are long standing and valued clients of JAC, so we are especially pleased to have been selected as their partner for delivering integrated medicines management services across the Trusts.
The roll-out of EPMA will further advance the already high standards of patient care at these sites and we look forward to being part of this highly significant project.
The Trusts will also be able to use EPMA’s powerful auditing and reporting tools to help key workers, such as pharmacists, doctors, clinicians and microbiologists, monitor prescribing and infection control protocols quickly and accurately.