Engagement Period: April 2018 – March 2019

The Challenge

Cloud21 were initially brought in to provide business change support to the Trust in their move from Allscripts Oasis PAS to System C Medway EPR. Cloud21 were subsequently asked to deliver data migration services to an extremely tight timescale when the Trust’s original data migration services procurement fell through.

As the go-live date approached Cloud21 provided further support to the Trust in configuring role-based access controls and letter templates for the new Medway system.

The migration project scope included all patient demographics, 2 years’ outpatient and inpatient activity history, current patient waiting lists and future appointments.

The Cloud21 data migration team worked closely with the Trust Informatics team and System C migration specialists to develop routines to extract legacy activity from Oasis for transfer to Medway.

Cloud21 arranged to extract data from Oasis overnight on most occasions to minimise the impact on end users of an overstretched server. The quality of data within Oasis was known to be quite poor – particularly around patient referral and RTT waiting time statuses. Cloud21 also worked closely with the Trust and System C to understand and replicate current waiting times logic and ensure data presented to Medway for migration satisfied Medway’s load criteria and logic.

The Approach

Cloud21 provided a highly skilled Informatics and Data Migration team to work with the Trust in the delivery of data migration and Informatics services for the project. Cloud21’s data migration tool (IDS) was installed to manage extraction from Oasis, transformation and delivery of data in the format required by Medway.

The team worked closely with the Trust information, project configuration and business change teams to understand and accommodate known issues with Oasis, ensuring that the data selected for migration was consistent, accurate and would support the business after go-live. A suite of bespoke data quality reports were developed for the Trust to focus on key issues.

These reports enabled the Trust to address some of their recording issues, while other data quality issues, such as inconsistent dates were addressed through the application of agreed rules during transformation of the data for loading into Medway.

The Patient Tracking List (PTL) was validated against the Trust’s list, enabling the Trust to focus on closing referrals erroneously left open following completion of treatment. Assurance of the RTT position was critical for the operational management to agree the Trust decision to go live. The team also supported and validated Medway clinic configuration throughout the project.

Cloud21 successfully delivered all data migration aspects of the programme, migrating 35 million records representing the Trust’s patients, historic activity, waiting lists and Clinic appointment records with a 99.99% success rate. The remaining records contained known critical inconsistencies and were manually corrected and transferred at go live.

Extract, Transform and Load (ETL):

The load and validation routines used for the Medway data migration were subject to a specification update during the lifetime of the project.

The Cloud21 team worked closely with System C and Trust colleagues to ensure that changes to the IFF specifications were incorporated into the Cloud21 transformation routines, and thoroughly tested prior to trial and final data migrations. All changes were incorporated into the ETL processes to ensure that migration processes were repeatable and fully auditable.

Trial Load Management:

Data Quality checks, two trial loads, two UAT loads and a dress rehearsal took place prior to the go-live weekend of 26th October. All these activities included delivering files to the supplier for either a formal validation process or loading into Medway. Interim runs were completed on a regular basis to monitor configuration and data quality issues.

The extraction and transformation of data to Medway IFF specifications typically took around 8 hours to complete.

Once the data processes had been fully validated and proved to be repeatable, weekly extractions of data were used to monitor the progress of clinic build.

Deployment Expertise:

The remit of the Cloud21 team extended beyond the data migration project to providing guidance and support across the deployment programme, which included:

• Strategic guidance and support across senior and operational deployment work streams, enabling decision making at all levels.
• Configuration: Provided reports and extracts from the legacy system. Assessment of data quality and identification of configuration gaps.
• Reporting and Information: Data reconciliation against the Trust’s existing data warehouse.

Post Go – LiveSupport

Following the successful migration and cutover to Medway the data migration team provided additional support in the two weeks following go live to triage any data migration issues. Cloud21 provided further extended business change and Medway configuration support as the Trust worked through embedding new working practices.

How did our work deliver value to the Client?

The Cloud21 team provided expert knowledge and skills across technical, operational and strategic elements of the deployment programme.

With unrivalled expertise of data migration practices and healthcare system knowledge, and extensive experience of Medway migrations the team successfully mitigated the Trust’s data migration and reporting risks, delivering a smooth transition with minimal disruption to service, allowing the Trust to return to business as usual in a short time.

Providing expert Data Migration and Informatics guidance across the EPR programme ensured the right decisions and actions were taken by the Trust at the right time, enabling a successful system implementation with minimal operational risk.

Testimonial

“Cloud21 were a key facilitator to ensuring we were able to migrate to our new Medway PAS system on the planned date. They were brought in with a very tight delivery timeline but with their expert knowledge and outstanding team work, Cloud21 delivered a seamless data migration. Their professional and collaborative approach established an excellent working partnership which has been praised extensively across the Trust team. Their flexibility and willingness to ‘roll up their sleeves’ and go above and beyond their initial scope was truly tremendous.”