Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust (LTHT) has completed the migration of its electronic patient records system fully onto Microsoft Azure. The hospital, which has 20,000 staff, began the migration of its software, PPM+, to Azure in early 2022, as part of a wider programme to improve the robustness, resilience and scalability of its IT infrastructure.
It now plans to use Azure as a foundation to launch and support other services, and has begun putting its data platform into the cloud with the aim of improving both integrated care and resource allocation.
PPM+ was developed over two decades ago as a small-scale, in-house application for cancer care teams. It has continued to expand and evolve, requiring more on-premise servers, which was expensive and potentially unreliable, as Paul Jones, chief digital information officer at the trust, explained.
“In a modern healthcare environment, the patient record is vital,” he said. “The best way of keeping PPM+ available to clinical staff was by moving to Azure. We’re now in the proud position of having a fully cloud-based, properly resilient, totally scalable electronic patient record supporting one of the largest teaching hospitals in the country.”
According to Microsoft, PPM+’s scale and sophistication is something other hospital trusts could emulate as part of the NHS’s continued digital transformation.
Jones said the migration onto Azure has enabled more joined-up care across the region. “Having both the electronic patient record and our data platform running on a robust, resilient Azure platform puts the trust in a really solid position,” he said.
“PPM+ is already the bedrock of much of the integration in our region, and we are looking to be a key part of the wider integration across the ICS [integrated care system] and beyond. There’s huge potential for PPM+ to bring benefits to public sector organisations at a range of levels.”
Jones said the trust wants to ensure data is available to clinicians and managers to enable data-based decisions themselves.
The healthcare system in Leeds involves multiple providers, from GPs to social care teams. “There is huge value in shared records,” he said.
The Leeds Care Record, which sits on top of PPM+, now shares patient information in a read-only format across every healthcare service in the city, even connecting with the wider Yorkshire and Humber record system. This enables more joined-up care with the potential to improve patient experience and streamline service provision.
Another benefit is with the trust’s HomeFirst programme, which comprises a group of services designed to provide short-term help for adults who need continuing support once they have been discharged from hospital. Jones said Azure helps the teams involved in the HomeFirst programme function more smoothly.
“Nobody wants to be in hospital if they don’t have to be,” he said. “Getting our patients home often involves different people from different organisations working together, and what we’ve built in Leeds allows that to happen more seamlessly.”