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Derby and Burton hospitals sign BridgeHead to decommission legacy applications

27/09/22

Mark Say Managing Editor

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University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust (UHDB) has contracted with BridgeHead Software to provide software and services to support its application decommissioning programme.

It plans to initially use the company’s HealthStore Independent Clinical Archive to migrate data from its legacy iSoft Clinical Manager (iCM) and emergency department information systems (EDIS), and to move on to other applications on its five sites targeted for retirement in the future.

As part of an ongoing digital transformation project, the Derby site is currently standardising its core systems and is moving functionality and data from older applications onto more modern systems.

HealthStore provides a standards based, central repository that brings together patient, clinical and administrative data of all types and formats from across a healthcare enterprise. Bridgehead said it can be easily accessed by clinicians and support staff either directly through a web based interface or via other healthcare systems, such as an EPR or clinical portal.

Need to access data

Mark Chester, head of digital technology at UHDB, said: “At UHDB, we have a number of applications that are no longer in active use, but which contain clinical data that still needs to be accessed from time to time, whether for clinical purposes or as part of our auditing processes. In addition, we are also obliged to retain this data for 25 years.

“However, some of these applications run on outdated operating systems and old hardware, none of which have a viable upgrade path. So to mitigate against system vulnerabilities and potential security risks, we had to find a way to shut down these applications whilst securing the data they contain for continued access.

“In addition, we understand that the cost and risk of running legacy systems continually increases over time, so we decided to do something about it now.”

 

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