This weekend sees the culmination of several years of partnership working between our Trust and Bradford Teaching Hospitals, as our Bradford partners go live with EPR.

The go-live weekend kicks off at 6pm tomorrow, when BTHFT will switch off their existing PAS system for the final time and begin down-time in preparation for the switch on of EPR – currently scheduled for this Sunday.

The Trust’s Associate Medical Director – Informatics, Dr Paul Southern, said: “This is a really exciting time. Having worked over at CHFT’s hospitals during their go-live, we have some idea of what to expect, but I know that no two hospitals are the same – so we’re preparing ourselves for some surprises too!”

Staff at BTHFT have been taking part in the same preparation activities that CHFT staff will remember, with final passport check -ins taking place this week, and orange T-shirts being distributed to EPR Friends.   

Bradford staff have also taken advantage of everything our Trust learned, with teams visiting our wards and departments to share experiences, over the past few weeks.    Some staff from CHFT have also volunteered to spend  time in Bradford over go-live to take what they learned and offer hands on support.

Kay Pagan, their lead nurse for the project, said: " Today, we hit a major milestone, with 80% of our staff having completed their training and  with many more courses running in the next few days, we anticipate almost every member of staff working at the Trust will be ready, when we go-live.”

Our EPR project is probably one of the largest EPR deployments ever seen in Europe and is a major achievement for both Trusts.   We are not anticipating that Bradford going live will have any direct impact on our use of the EPR system itself. If  staff do notice anything usual, they should contact our IT helpdesk as they normally would.