Jun 15: The eHospital Programme, implementation of Epic and the opportunities this gives for research - Afzal Chaudhry, Amanda O’Neill and Lydia Drumright

Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust have committed £200m over 10 years to their electronic patient record (EPR) e-Hospital programme. They were the first in the UK to implement Epic, an EPR system used by 40% of Academic Health Science Centres in North America. The system went live at the end of October 2014 in a "big bang" implementation.

Dr Afzal Chaudhry explained the journey and the principles of the decision and implementation. Dr Chaudhry heads the Cambridge Clinical Informatics Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) theme and is the Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Chief Clinical Information Officer (CCIO) and chaired the design authority for the Epic implementation and also heads the Clinical Informatics theme at the Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre (BRC). The system has been put in place with research very much in mind with handling of research data built in to the infrastructure and Dr Lydia Drumright went on to explain how a standardised and comprehensive system for research governance and ethics approval is being developed.