Transforming Healthcare at Scale: MFT’s Hive EPR Integration

Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT) is one of the UK’s largest acute Trusts, providing health and social care to over 750,000 patients across ten hospitals, including Manchester Royal Infirmary, Wythenshawe Hospital, and Trafford General. With a complex and fragmented IT landscape, MFT needed a unified Electronic Patient Record (EPR) system to enhance patient care, streamline workflows, and improve data accessibility.

MFT’s hospitals relied on multiple, often outdated, Patient Administration Systems (PAS) and Electronic Patient Records (EPR), creating inefficiencies for clinicians and administrative staff. The Trust required a single, integrated solution to unify patient data, improve interoperability, and deliver a seamless experience for both clinicians and patients.

The scale of this transformation posed significant challenges, including:

• Large-scale data migration from multiple legacy systems.
• Complex system integration across different clinical and administrative workflows.
• A tight implementation timeline, with go-live scheduled within two years.

Following a comprehensive procurement process, MFT selected Epic as its new EPR provider, launching Hive, the largest EPR programme in the UK.

To support the success of Hive, Answer Digital partnered with MFT’s Integration Team to design and implement a fully integrated, interoperable solution.

Our role included:

• Epic Bridges Certification: Our Integration Engineer became a certified Bridges Analyst, enabling us to develop and configure interfaces within Epic’s Bridges framework.
• System Integration & Development: We worked closely with MFT’s teams to design, test, and deploy interfaces in InterSystems Integration Engine, ensuring seamless data flow across clinical systems.
• Live Support & Go-Live Readiness: Answer Digital played a key role in ensuring the stability and efficiency of the system ahead of Hive’s September 2022 launch.

Hive’s go-live marked the largest implementation of Epic in Europe. Within months, MFT began reporting significant benefits, including:

• Improved Patient Engagement: Over 360,000 patients registered on MyMFT, an Epic-powered patient portal, providing quick access to clinical information, test results, and appointment details.
• Reduced Missed Appointments: Did Not Attend (DNA) rates dropped from 11% to 9.7%, improving patient access to care .
• Pharmacy Integration Success: A fully integrated pharmacy solution now connects automated dispensing robots and cabinets across multiple hospital sites, reducing medication administration errors and improving stock management.
• Operational & Financial Gains: MFT has reported significant cost savings, a reduction in medication incidents, and the ability to proactively manage drug shortages

In addition to the patient matching, our integration engine enabled bidirectional data flow between the two trusts. For example, when a patient was scheduled or had arrived at the CDC, Gateshead’s RIS would notify Newcastle of the patient’s status.

To do this, the system used a persisted SQL database containing identifiers like the Gateshead MRN, Newcastle MRN, and NHS number. This ensured that the correct identifiers were always used in communications between the two trusts, maintaining data consistency and improving patient care coordination.

The technical solution supported multiple diagnostic services, including Radiology, Cardiology, Spirometry, and ECG (both 12-lead and Holter). These services were integrated into the CDC through the new Patient Matching Component, along with bespoke order communications interfaces. This streamlined the diagnostic process and reduced the administrative burden on staff, making the system more efficient and effective.

The benefits of this system are anticipated to be significant. The automation of patient registration and matching reduces the need for manual intervention, saving an estimated 25-40% in time and effort for administrative tasks. The reduction in manual tasks allows staff to be reallocated to more valuable duties, increasing overall productivity. The system also improves patient safety by reducing the risk of misidentification or data entry errors, which could have had serious consequences for patient care. The use of the PDS lookup and manual review process ensured that records were accurately matched, minimising potential errors and ensuring the right care was provided to the right patient.

Moreover, the system’s scalability means that it can be adopted by other NHS trusts with minimal additional support. This scalable solution provides a blueprint for other organisations looking to improve their diagnostic services, ensuring that the benefits realised by Gateshead and Newcastle can be extended across the NHS. The project’s success has already attracted attention, and the technical solution developed by Answer Digital is now being blueprinted for use by other NHS organisations, further expanding its impact.