BT selects HP and IDX to collaborate on NHS Care Records Service for London

January 7, 2005

NonStop server solution provides disaster-tolerant platform to deliver mission-critical information

HP has announced that, together with IDX, it will provide an integrated patient records solution running on NonStop servers to BT, the Local Service Provider (LSP) for the NHS in the London region. Under the National Programme for IT (NPFIT) plans, all 50 million NHS patients will have an individual electronic care record by 2010.

BT has been selected as the LSP for the London region and in that capacity turned to HP and IDX to develop a resilient technology platform to meet the requirements of the NHS. The London production cluster will consist of 128 NonStop S86000 processors running IDX’s Carecast application; an Electronic Patient Record system supporting patient administration, electronic prescribing, and electronic access to clinical results; document imaging; and sophisticated decision support.

Given the life-critical nature of the data, the NHS has imposed demanding Service Level Agreements requiring 24 x 365 uptime and the capability to support extremely large numbers of users over a ten-year life cycle. The inherent fault tolerance of the NonStop platform is therefore augmented by the HP NonStop Remote Database Facility/Zero Lost Transactions (RDF/ZLT) solution. This has been implemented in an HP Metrocluster for NonStop servers configuration, using HP StorageWorks XP128 Disk Arrays, to allow the online backup site to be located up to100 kilometers from the primary site. This configuration ensures that all patient data entered in the Electronic Patient Record system will be fully protected even after a catastrophic site failure.

In total, the new system will benefit approximately 200,000 NHS and Social Services staff across five Strategic Health Authorities serving 7.2 million people.

“Healthcare is the most critical business. IDX chose NonStop servers because we believe it is the only platform able to guarantee the performance our customers need. Without “thinkspeed” computing, clinician acceptance is far harder to gain,” said Trevor Stanley, MD, IDX UK. Find out more information about this mission-critical NonStop solution in the press release.

This news is published on NonStop Computing websites. January 2005.