eCPA system for NHS Trust

The Electronic Care plan Approach (eCPA) is a Department Of Health (DOH) mandated system for managing the Care Program Approach within NHS Mental Health Trust environments.

The objectives of eCPA are to:

• Provide Complete Care Plans for patients
• Maintain strict Security / Confidentiality requirements
• Incorporate existing medical documents
• Give accurate and timely reporting to The DOH

South West London & St Georges Mental NHS Trust (SWLSG) chose Octavia to design and implement a solution to meet the requirements of eCPA. Octavia were chosen after successfully working with SWLSG on a number of other projects.

A Prince II project methodology was followed, incorporating SSADM.

An initial feasibility exercise un-earthed potential obstacles for the successful implementation of eCPA:

• Unclear implementation strategy
• Disparate work practices and systems
• Disparate legacy systems
• Multiple locations with c.2000 Users
• "Hostile" user base
• Inflexible requirements from DOH

Octavia worked closely with SWLSG to overcome these potential problems, guiding them through the design and implementation process.

Octavia defined the strategic and local requirements through a structured requirements gathering exercise. This involved not only analysing existing work practices but also unifying these work practices across multiple departments.

A system was designed based on an n-tier architecture utilising a MS SQL server database platform. A web-based user interface was developed using Microsoft tools. This approach reduced the costs associated with rollout to many sites and a large number of desktops.

A working prototype was developed which allowed a wide range of users to be involved in the design process. As well as being a key application design stage, this prototype also helped overcome any pre-conceived hostility to the system. A data connector was also created to allow the system to integrate with a legacy IBM UniData system.

The project has been an overwhelming success. Business benefits such as 24/7 access to patient data, data accuracy, timely reporting to DOH standards, etc have resulted in the system being widely accepted by the user base.

SWLST were recently awarded a maximum 5/5 by the Department of Health (DOH) for their implementation of their eCPA system (source: Commission for Health Improvement). The Head of IM&T for SWLSG made the following comment "Octavia have shown to be genuine in their desire to meet the customer requirements, with an excellent working relationship - a true business partner".