Press Room

The Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust enhances its business intelligence and reporting with InterSystems Ensemble

 - Ensemble software is now the cornerstone of the Trust’s IT strategy -

Eton, UK–14th January 2010 - InterSystems today announced that the Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust is integrating its clinical IT systems using InterSystems Ensemble^®.   The Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust is the UK’s only integrated Neurosciences Trust.  The Trust is using Ensemble, a seamless platform for integration and the development of connectable applications, to enhance its business intelligence functionality and reporting.

Justin Griffiths, Head of IM&T at the Trust said, “The fact that Ensemble is the CSC Trust Integration Engine was a big factor in our decision and we were greatly reassured by the number of UK reference sites. Ensemble is now the cornerstone of the Trust’s IT strategy; it’s far more than just an integration engine, it’s a platform that enables the Trust to access ‘live’ reports through the BAM dashboards. What’s more, InterSystems’ training of our in-house teams, coupled with Ensemble’s simplicity were also major factors in our decision.  They really have held our hands all the way down the line and all new users are now very confident with the platform thanks to them. ” 

The Walton Centre previously relied upon point-to-point interfaces for its integration projects, without a back-up or test platform, therefore the Trust could not easily test and launch new interfaces. Consequently, existing interfaces were difficult to maintain, and any new ones had to be written with the support of third parties.  Ensemble’s implementation has made a direct impact on the efficiency of sharing patient and management information, and the cost of delivering care.

Ensemble was selected because of its ability to support a variety of integration interface types, including HL7, and the ease with which new interfaces and Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) dashboards are built and maintained. The Trust can now produce ‘live’ reports on finance, divisional activity, patient stays and quality controls - vastly improving the quality of information available.  Furthermore, by using the online dashboarding the IT department can now identify any problem interfaces before they impact users, which improves the Hospital’s efficiency and minimises disruption to clinical services.

The new integration hub went ‘live’ in just five-days, and is now replacing  legacy interfaces, for radiology, pathology and several theatre modules, and further systems will be added later in the year.  Ensemble also provides the Trust with a configuration management environment to support their quality management process across three environments: live, back-up and test.  To reduce the future cost of integration and improve the Trust’s agility to manage change themselves, InterSystems assisted the in-house team with a comprehensive skills transfer training programme for the development of new interfaces supporting a wide variety of formats.

Jonathan Selby, UK Country Manager at InterSystems said: “Choosing Ensemble will help the Trust to improve the quality of patient information available to clinicians and will allow the Hospital to integrate new applications with vastly reduced costs in the future.”