28 January 2010
TPP Achieves 15 Go Lives in a Single Week
In the run up to Christmas, TPP's Clinical Imports team (who deal with organisations going through data migration onto SystmOne) achieved a first - 15 SystmOne GP practice Go Lives in a single week. TPP ended 2009 with almost double the amount of Go Lives as 2008. And the momentum doesn't end there, the Imports team are already hard at work on the first deployments of 2010.
The team has grown to cope with the number of deployments coming through. Amy Verity, Clinical Imports team manager, says, "We now have a team of 15 - the largest the team has ever been - and a lot of them are now very experienced. It takes us about three months to train someone up in Imports, and about a year for them to be able to perform live imports for units moving on to SystmOne. The thing that unites the team is the same sense of dedication to the job, a willingness to get things done in an efficient and professional manner - plus a sense of humour and good team spirit!"
"We take data migration very seriously. When we're recruiting people for our team, we look for people with a keen eye for detail, commitment, and the ability to follow instructions and to be patient. Working with patient records is so important; it absolutely has to be done right."
A GP Go Live is an intensive procedure for the Imports team. Once the practice has signed off to say that they are happy with the way data is presented on SystmOne, the team pre-loads the live data and performs a series of checks on it. These are the same checks that have previously happened on SystmOne Dummy - this includes a series of automated checks as well as manual ones. Once the team is happy with the data, it is loaded on to SystmOne Live and further key checks are performed. Amy says, "The checks we do before loading the data onto Live are of paramount importance - we make sure we are absolutely happy with it before doing the final upload. And we don't do any of this until the practice have done their checking and have signed off."
Amy continues, "When we have a lot of Go Lives in one week, we have to plan carefully. Everyone needs to be aware of what's going on and of how important Go Lives are. And we also have to make sure that work that needs doing for other units going through deployment is done too."
So, is 15 the limit for the Imports team? "No way!" says Amy. "We're a large and experienced team and we have the capacity to do many more Go Lives at one time. We are also helped by the Import Coding team, who are the software engineers who work on the technical side of deployments and fix problems that we come across during a data migration. They have the same work ethic as we do and we get on really well with them as a team. Together, our priority is always to help units through deployments as quickly and smoothly as possible, and we'll keep growing to ensure we continue to achieve that."
Is there anything that users can do to help achieve a smooth Go Live? Amy answers, "Be available up until Go Live so that if we have a query we can contact them and get it sorted out quickly. We know that changing IT systems can be stressful and perhaps, at some times, frustrating. That's why we ask people to follow our processes. Our procedures are clearly defined, are always being improved, and work really smoothly now."
Looking to the future, Amy says, "We've got some exciting deployments this year, for example, a community deployment with nearly 30 different services, and several child health units. We are also looking at how we will be involved with the company's new modules covering acute, mental health and social services settings. In primary care, as a team our goal is to do more Go Lives and to get out and meet more users so that we can help them even more."
