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Chelsea and Wesminster NHS Trust
Making the right integration decisions at Chelsea and Wesminster NHS Trust
ReStart has successfully completed a major project to move Chelsea and Westminster NHS Trust from SeeBeyond’s DataGate EAI integration interface toolset to the ICAN5 suite.
Prompted by the need to comply with the NPfIT Connecting for Health programme interface functionality requirements, the project was completed on time and to budget.
The Chelsea and Westminster Healthcare Trust is based at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London. Opened in 1993, it is a leading teaching institution with strong links to Imperial College School of Medicine.
It is also a teaching centre for Thames University of Nursing. It employs over 2,200 personnel, and 2004-05 income was over £190 million.
The trust serves the local population of 390,000 living in Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster, as well as parts of Fulham, Putney, Wandsworth and Battersea. Specialist healthcare services are provided to an even wider catchment area.
An interesting claim to fame by the trust is the world’s largest naturally ventilated atrium which regularly hosts art exhibitions – as part of the hospital’s ‘healing environment’.
A long-standing and experienced user of IT, the trust has a mainly Windows-based infrastructure, with Unix for certain key application areas.
It recently undertook a major upgraded of its Unix servers to Sunfire V210x2 with High-Availability. Com’s RSF-1 business continuity failover – www.high-availability.com. Operating software was upgraded from Solaris 5 to Solaris 8.
Like similar NHS trusts, Chelsea and Westminster needed to meet the application interfacing functionality criteria established as apart of the National Programme for IT (NPfIT) Connecting for Health initiative.
“We had already identified SeeBeyond’s ICAN5 suite as the natural replacement for their former DataGate product which had been in use by the trust for around eight years. It was no longer supported by SeeBeyond so a replacement was required quite apart from the need to satisfy the NPfIT criteria,” says Chelsea and Westminster NHS Trust Integration Specialist Brian Lehane. “In addition, Sun support for our then current Unix hardware was coming to an end.
The challenge
The fact that the replacement eGate module and new ICAN suite 5.5 were recommended by the NPfIT and offered under free licence was an added reason for the transition to the SeeBeyond offering”. The ICAN suite is easy-to-use, scalable and open platform for developing, executing and managing end-to-end integrated business processes as composite applications.
The SeeBeyond ICAN suite is the next generation of open integration bringing A2A, B2B, and BPM together with Web services, SOA, J2EE Application Servers, ETL, BAM, Data Quality Management, Composite View Generation, Indexing, Workflow and Portals.
Core component e*Gate Integrator5 ICAN provides a J2EE compliant and Web services-based distributed integration platform for application connectivity, data transformation and guaranteed transactions and messaging.
SeeBeyond itself is recognised as a major player in the international integration arena. Analysts Butler Group – www.butlergroup.com – named the company as “the leading integration software vendor”. A recent Butler Report review of the ICAN5.5 suite described it as a product “that broke new ground” in the application integration landscape”.
“The software product selection was relatively straightforward,” says Lehane. “In our case it fairly naturally led to SeeBeyond’s ICAN replacement for DataGate, which was no longer supported. The upgrades for Sun Unix hardware and Solaris operating system software were equally straightforward”.
Cost-effective solution
“However, the actual integration, interface writing, implementation – and putting together of all the elements, as well as dealing with the numerous and untidy odds and loose ends was a different matter. Here, we needed a combination of technical skills, software product familiarity, project management excellence, training, general handholding – and sufficient authority to take responsibility for actually making it all work”.
“In theory, we had the necessary skills in-house, but we had to balance possible cost savings such internal resource might deliver against the need to travel a learning curve of unknown distance, unfamiliarity with the new technologies to be employed, and our ability unaided to meet the kind of deadlines involved”.
“We decided fairly early in the discussion stage that we would go for a third party integrator. An option was , whose familiarity with the product was undoubted, as well as other independent integration solution providers. In fact, we had previously attended a seminar in the City which had focussed on interface engines in the context of the Npfit”.
“This had been organised by ReStart, who were obviously steeped in the ICAN technologies and were able to demonstrate the project management disciplines and NHS IT experience we were looking for,” says Lehane.
SeeBeyond had already been selected by BT to provide the core software for the transactional messaging service for 'data spine', as part of their National Application Service Provider (NASP) contract to deliver the central NHS Care Record Service component of Npfit.
BT is using the ICAN application to design, deliver and manage the national patient record database and transactional messaging service, at the centre of NHS CRS. As the core software for the transactional messaging service initiative, SeeBeyond's eGate Integrator and eInsight Business Process Manager will serve as the Web services and J2EE-based integration platform for business process management.
Establishing the benefits
Delivery of the personal demographics service module of NHS CRS is being facilitated by SeeBeyond's eView Global Identifier. This will act as the basis of the NHS CRS to record and cross-index patient and care information electronically, eliminating duplication of patient files and improving information sharing.
“ReStart’s professionalism couldn’t be faulted. They made sure we understood all the stages of the project and really did deliver exactly what we wanted. They set up everything from scratch on the new servers, built the interfaces, handled the implementation and testing – before turning it over to our own IT department”.
“Altogether, there were around 20 interfaces to be written, including those for all the clinical departmental applications connecting to the hospital’s main admin system, as well as to external applications, such as pharmacy, data warehousing and theatre systems. There were also a number of standalone applications”. This was all completed in the 3 months timeframe”.
“These included, for example AcuBase’s Critical Care system for the hospital’s high dependency unit – www.acubase.org. We were particularly impressed with the development of the interface between lab systems and the IDX LastWord electronic patient records system”.
“ReStart gave us full documentation for the then existing system and moved smoothly through the configuration and implementation stages. They were brilliant. No messing about”.
“Time estimates were accurate and the fruits of the project were delivered punctually and to budget. Project management was sharp and authoritative and their familiarity with PRINCE2 methodology further demonstrated the NHS IT expertise”.
“Their SeeBeyond ICAN expertise really came into play, for example, when they had to look at all the mappings and translations from the old DataGate system and redo them in Java. It was very much a partnership – with a ReStart consultant with us full-time throughout all stages of the project. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them to others”.
