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Trust becomes third in Kent to choose the Allscripts electronic patient record (EPR), and aims for first go-live in six-months to support clinicians and patient safety
DATELINE – February 2021 – Medway NHS Foundation Trust is looking to make rapid improvements in its digital maturity with the Allscripts Sunrise electronic patient record.
The Kent trust signed a contract with Allscripts in December 2020 and is planning to go-live with the first phase of core functionality six months from the start of the project. The launch of clinical documents with in-context links to other IT systems in use at the trust will give clinicians easier access to a single view of patient information.
It will also lay the foundations for three further phases of a full EPR roll-out, including e- prescribing and medicines administration, for which the trust has received national funding.
Medway will be able to move quickly because it will be leveraging the Allscripts UK Blueprint that has been designed and tested with organisations such as Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, to deliver rapid success to trusts with low digital maturity.
Michael Beckett, interim director of IT at Medway NHS Foundation Trust, said: “Our digital maturity is not where it should be, and that is something that the board and our clinicians want to address. We are running many legacy systems and we want to consolidate them to support our clinicians and build a platform for the future.”
“By working with Allscripts, we will also be working with the solution that is used by our neighbours at East Kent University Hospitals and Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells. That will create tremendous opportunities for interoperability across our region.”
“The trust is very excited about this development and what it will mean, not just for the next few months, but for the future.”
Medway is a long-standing Allscripts client that went live with the company’s patient administration system in 2015. However, it has been running as many as 80 clinical systems and 70 additional systems alongside the PAS and is now looking to consolidate them into a single EPR.
Retaining the PAS and using the Allscripts ‘clinical wrap’ approach to add clinical functionality will enable the trust to do this more quickly and at a significantly lower cost than discarding the system.
But to double-check it was making the right choice, the trust conducted market reviews and held demonstration workshops with its clinicians before going with Sunrise, which Beckett said was a popular choice among doctors who have done clinical rotations through King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, which also uses the EPR.
The UK Blueprint and Allscripts’ integration capabilities were further, important factors in the choice. Beckett said: “Knowing that we can go-live and start to make a difference quickly is important.
“Our strategy and our business case are focused on delivering time to care back to clinicians and on improving safety for patients. Seeing what the other trusts that we have spoken to have been able to achieve has given us the confidence that we will be able to deliver that.”
Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the go-live will be planned and delivered remotely. Work will start in April 2021, when the worst of the second wave should be over. Allscripts and the trust will keep the situation under review, and flex timescales as necessary to maintain clinical engagement.
James Devine, Medway NHS Foundation Trust’s Chief Executive said, “this project will have a profound impact on the trust and healthcare across Kent.”
“This is about giving our clinicians the digital tools they need to do the job, every day,” he said. “It is also about creating a platform for increasingly joined-up systems across the region, so that we can benefit from sharing information and moving towards a population health and integrated care approach.”
“I am confident that we have the right strategy, the right solution and the right proven supplier to deliver for our clinicians and for our patients.”
Richard Strong, Vice President and Managing Director, EMEA, Allscripts, said: “We are pleased to see another NHS trust looking beyond the pandemic and choosing the Sunrise electronic patient record to support clinicians and patients in the future.
“We look forward to working with Medway NHS Foundation Trust and its neighbouring organisations, East Kent University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust on a series of go-lives over the next few months. Together, these will have a significant positive impact on digital maturity across the region.”
ENDS
About Allscripts
Allscripts (NASDAQ: MDRX) is a leader in healthcare information technology solutions that advance
clinical, financial and operational results. Our innovative solutions connect people, places and data across an Open, Connected Community of HealthTM. Connectivity empowers caregivers to make better decisions and deliver better care for healthier populations. To learn more, visit www.alteradigital.com, Twitter, YouTube and It Takes A Community: The Allscripts Blog.
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© 2021 Allscripts Healthcare, LLC and/or its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.
Allscripts, the Allscripts logo, and other Allscripts marks are trademarks of Allscripts Healthcare, LLC and/or its affiliates. All other products are trademarks of their respective holders, all rights reserved. Reference to these products is not intended to imply affiliation with or sponsorship of Allscripts Healthcare, LLC and/or its affiliates.
For more information contact:
Investors:
Stephen Shulstein
312-386-6735
[email protected]
Media:
Concetta Rasiarmos 312-447-2466
[email protected]
About Altera Digital Health
A global healthcare IT innovator, Altera Digital Health develops and elevates technology to connect and inspire healthier communities. Our platform approach to our solutions is changing the way healthcare is delivered. By keeping the human user at the center of our design methodology, we are supporting caregivers and helping patients meet and exceed their wellness goals. Together, with our clients, we’re driving a new era of healthcare. To learn more, visit www.alteradigital.com.
Copyright 2026 Altera Digital Health Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
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MELBOURNE – 21 January 2021 – The Gippsland Health Alliance (GHA) has announced plans for the expansion of its Allscripts SunriseTM electronic medical record (EMR) across the Victorian region of Gippsland. Phase 3 of GHA’s EMR Community Health project will see the implementation of the Sunrise Emergency Care module (within the Sunrise EMR platform of health) at the emergency department facilities of the Central Gippsland Health Service, Bairnsdale Regional Health Service (servicing east Gippsland), West Gippsland Healthcare Group and Bass Coast Health, which covers the southern part of the region. Sunrise will then be rolled out across inpatient services at all four hospitals.
In October this year, Allscripts (NASDAQ: MDRX) completed the rollout of its Sunrise EMR platform at the Latrobe Regional Hospital (LRH). The EMR went live in the Latrobe 30-bed ED in April 2019 and is now fully functional across inpatient services at LRH and Community Mental Health services across the region. LRH is Gippsland’s specialist referral and trauma centre, located 150km east of Melbourne, and is one of the region’s largest employers with more than 2,100 staff. It is a purpose-built 300-plus-bed teaching hospital caring for a population of more than 260,000 people.
Latrobe is the health IT company’s first implementation of its EMR solution in Victoria and is also one of the first EMRs in Australia to use Microsoft Azure. The cost efficiency, flexibility and resilience associated with cloud-based systems was a driving force behind the decision by other members of the alliance to extend the Sunrise EMR platform across Gippsland.
Todd Haebich, General Manager of Allscripts Australia said that the extension of Sunrise reflects international best practice by enabling a continuum of care across the region of Gippsland.
“This is the first step towards establishing a connected health community across a large and well-populated area and we are delighted to be supporting the Gippsland Health Alliance’s vision,” explained Mr. Haebich.
“When clinicians have information on a patient’s health status and history they can make more informed decisions and provide a higher quality of care whilst also optimising scarce resources.”
Jon Millar, Chief Information Officer of the Gippsland Health Alliance said that phase 3 of the EMR Community Health project will extend the proven benefits of an EMR to the entire Gippsland region.
“This is about improving the quality of health service across a much bigger footprint in the Gippsland region and helps us deliver on our commitment to empower clinicians to deliver a world-class service,” explained Mr. Millar.
The Gippsland Health Alliance (GHA) is a consortium of publicly funded health services in the Gippsland region of Victoria, east of Melbourne, covering some 41,556 square kilometres (16,045 sq mi). Allscripts won the competitive tender to deliver an EMR solution to the Gippsland Health Alliance in late 2017 and Latrobe Regional Hospital (LRH) was selected as the first site in the Alliance to implement the Sunrise EMR clinical suite.
ENDS
About Allscripts
Allscripts (NASDAQ: MDRX) is a leader in healthcare information technology solutions that advance clinical, financial and operational results. Our innovative solutions connect people, places and data across an Open, Connected Community of HealthTM. Connectivity empowers caregivers to make better decisions and deliver better care for healthier populations. To learn more, visit www.alteradigital.com, Twitter, YouTube and It Takes A Community: The Allscripts Blog.
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© 2021 Allscripts Healthcare, LLC and/or its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.
Allscripts, the Allscripts logo, and other Allscripts marks are trademarks of Allscripts Healthcare, LLC and/or its affiliates. All other products are trademarks of their respective holders, all rights reserved. Reference to these products is not intended to imply affiliation with or sponsorship of Allscripts Healthcare, LLC and/or its affiliates.
For more information contact:
Investors:
Stephen Shulstein
312-386-6735
[email protected]
Media:
Concetta Rasiarmos
312-447-2466
[email protected]
About Altera Digital Health
A global healthcare IT innovator, Altera Digital Health develops and elevates technology to connect and inspire healthier communities. Our platform approach to our solutions is changing the way healthcare is delivered. By keeping the human user at the center of our design methodology, we are supporting caregivers and helping patients meet and exceed their wellness goals. Together, with our clients, we’re driving a new era of healthcare. To learn more, visit www.alteradigital.com.
Copyright 2026 Altera Digital Health Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
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2021 – Kent trust has elevated its ambitions for digital maturity, deploying Allscripts’ Sunrise EPR to encourage joined up care. The move makes Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells the second of four acute trusts in the region to implement Allscripts Sunrise EPR.
Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust has deployed Sunrise EPR across the emergency departments at both its hospitals, as well as paediatric inpatient services, gastroenterology and neurology outpatients, and ordering tests and making referrals trust wide. Despite only being a few weeks in, the trust is already experiencing impressive clinical benefits. “The new system has provided functionality that enables our teams to seamlessly share patient data, supporting the further development of a shared care record for Kent”, commented Jane Saunders, EPR Director at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust.
The trust selected Allscripts as its EPR provider in 2019 and the recent go-live marks a big step forward for the trust’s digital maturity, helping to fulfil its ‘digital first, paper second’ strategy. The early clinical benefits for the trust have been notable, improving and digitising previously manual, time-consuming processes. Jane added that “just two weeks in, 1,200 daily users were able to deliver 30,000 tests and 170,000 results into the system. Labelling, that had previously been completed manually, has now been automated, saving hospital staff eight hours per day processing pathology forms. As a result, our clinicians have been able to spend more time with patients and have better visibility of each patient’s care pathway as all their information is recorded and stored within the EPR.”
Such early success, Jane adds, was made possible by how usable Sunrise is, and the structured training provided to get clinicians used to the new technology. “We took a blended approach, with in person and online training, even being able to conduct one-to-ones with those who were more nervous about using the technology. As a result, we were able to get 78% of staff fully trained ahead of deployment, meaning clinicians were able to make the most out of all their processes being integrated from day one.”
The flexibility and adaptability of Sunrise has also been recognised by staff across the trust. Peter Maskell, Medical Director, said: “It’s really intuitive. Clinicians are coming to me and saying, ‘oh, this is so easy’ and they have begun thinking about how it could be configured for their department’s specific needs. Most importantly, we’re able to review and take stock of what’s working well and how we can adapt to make the most of its flexibility.”
“In the Emergency Department, workflows are being transformed. Previously, clinicians would be walking around to manually track patients, or to review notes from junior doctors,” Sue Forsey, Director of IT, adds. “Now, all processes are stored in Sunrise, so notescan be reviewed or exchanged without having to take the trip down to ED. The tab functionality within Sunrise also allows our clinical teams to use the EPR to easily access other applications acting as a portal so they have the right information, in the right place, when they need it. Our patients will experience less repetition too as all clinicians in their care pathway will have greater visibility of their needs.”
Sue also relayed the positivity from the trust’s phlebotomists. “I think they’re the happiest people in the hospital. Their entire workflow is stored in a single, focused place, so they have all the information in front of them when they need it.”
The trust has more plans, including regional ambitions, that the go-live has the potential to unlock.
Jane says: “The next step for the trust is to deploy Sunrise across all inpatient adult wards for core clinical documents before rolling out ePMA within 2021/22. We’re keen to see what else we can digitise, so we can support the continued integration of the Kent and Medway Shared Care Record.
“We now have a ‘single tab’ to access shared data directly from Sunrise, which will enable us to work with neighbouring trusts in a more seamless way. The trust provides cancer services for the whole region, which is one of the most populous In tegrated Care Systems in England, so the increased capabilities for data sharing provide a promising foundation for more joined up, and ultimately better care, for patients.”
As a partner, Allscripts were “as much a part of our team as we are a part of theirs” concluded Sue. They’ve helped us to take steps towards digital maturity and think differently about our data strategies for the future.”
ENDS
About Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust
Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust is a large acute hospital Trust in the south east of England. The Trust was legally established on 14 February 2000 and provides a full range of general hospital services, and some areas of specialist complex care to around 560,000 people living in the south of West Kent and the north of East Sussex.
The Trust’s core catchment areas are Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells and their surrounding boroughs, and it operates from two main clinical sites: Maidstone Hospital and Tunbridge Wells Hospital at Pembury. The latter is a Private Finance Initiative (PFI) hospital and provides wholly single bedded en-suite accommodation for in-patients.
The Trust employs a team of over 5000 full and part-time staff. In addition, the Trust provides specialist cancer services to around 1.8 million people across Kent, Hastings and Rother, via the Kent Oncology Centre, which is sited at Maidstone Hospital, and at Kent and Canterbury Hospital in Canterbury. The Trust also provides outpatient clinics across a wide range of locations in Kent and East Sussex.
About Allscripts
Allscripts (NASDAQ: MDRX) is a leader in healthcare information technology solutions that advance
clinical, financial and operational results. Our innovative solutions connect people, places and data across an Open, Connected Community of HealthTM. Connectivity empowers caregivers to make better decisions and deliver better care for healthier populations. To learn more, visit www.alteradigital.com, Twitter, YouTube and It Takes A Community: The Allscripts Blog.
###
© 2021 Allscripts Healthcare, LLC and/or its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.
Allscripts, the Allscripts logo, and other Allscripts marks are trademarks of Allscripts Healthcare, LLC and/or its affiliates. All other products are trademarks of their respective holders, all rights reserved. Reference to these products is not intended to imply affiliation with or sponsorship of Allscripts Healthcare, LLC and/or its affiliates.
For more information contact:
Investors:
Stephen Shulstein
312-386-6735
[email protected]
Media:
Concetta Rasiarmos 312-447-2466
[email protected]
About Altera Digital Health
A global healthcare IT innovator, Altera Digital Health develops and elevates technology to connect and inspire healthier communities. Our platform approach to our solutions is changing the way healthcare is delivered. By keeping the human user at the center of our design methodology, we are supporting caregivers and helping patients meet and exceed their wellness goals. Together, with our clients, we’re driving a new era of healthcare. To learn more, visit www.alteradigital.com.
Copyright 2026 Altera Digital Health Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.