Lorenzo Has Arrived – Well Almost!

The following commentary was published a few days ago.

Lorenzo Studio

11 Sep 2008

It has been a long time coming, but an initial version of Lorenzo has finally gone live in one part of South Birmingham Primary Care Trust. It is still very early days - a full care records system remains a long way off - but at last there is something called Lorenzo that is now in use by at least some NHS staff.

If, as expected, University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust becomes the first acute trust to go live with a product called Lorenzo this autumn, its developers and the National Programme for IT in the NHS will be able to claim the first signs of momentum.

After four years of delays, during which Lorenzo has been promised as the “strategic” system for three out of five of the national programme’s regions, it might, finally, have reached the end of the beginning.

Live from down under

But ensuring the full delivery of the full Lorenzo Care Records System to the NHS is only the beginning of IBA Health Group’s lofty ambitions. In an exclusive interview, carried out days ahead of the go-live at Birmingham, an ebullient Gary Cohen spoke to E-Health Insider from Sydney about the company’s plans.

The group’s executive chairman said the first part of iSoft’s Lorenzo product suite will be Lorenzo Studio, which is set to be launched internationally at the Medica trade show this November. He said Lorenzo Studio has the potential to become a common “health operating system”, able to utilise web services to link together a range of legacy systems.

Indeed, he bullishy laid out ambitions for Lorenzo Studio to become nothing less than the common platform for healthcare internationally. “It will have a valuable role in transforming healthcare worldwide,” he predicted.

There is a lot more here:

http://ehealtheurope.net/comment_and_analysis/347/lorenzo_studio

Reading the article I am feeling rather encouraged – as it sounds like the worst is well and truly over in the development of what must be one of the very few advanced Health IT systems developed from the ground up over the last few years. (This is a very expensive and complex undertaking as many who have previously have said.)

To me using a services approach makes a great deal of sense – especially if it is to be architected in such a way as other specialist system providers can add to the IBA / iSoft core as required.

As I said months ago – delivery will be key to IBA’s success – and it looks like this just got a little closer. Given they are an Australian owned company one can only wish them luck!

David.

(Usual disclaimer of owning a few IBA shares applies).