This is one of the fastest procurements and implementation in Unisoft's nine year history - a fortnight !

Following a formal tendering exercise, the North Hampshire Hospital opted for Unisoft's GI Reporting Tool to replace its existing Endocribe(tm) software. The choice was based on the preference of the clinicians, who had seen the product demonstrated, and because it offered best value for money.

Unisoft were invited to a project assessment meeting at the hospital on 11th November. Present were the heads and various staff member of IM&T, Information Systems and the Diagnosis and Treatment Centre.

Funding for the software had already been secured and so the objectives were to assess whether the software would fit within the Trust's overall IT strategy and if so, what would be its technical and resource requirements during implementation.

Under discussion was a four concurrent user version of the GI Reporting Tool, one DigImAK - Image Capture Kit - for the single endoscopy room, and a temporary screen-scrape routine for grabbing demographic data from the PMS PAS plus two days of training.

It took 90 minutes for everyone to agree that the procurement could go ahead and one of the attendees accepted the role as the Trust's project leader.

Unisoft were asked how quickly they could deliver and install the software. Everyone checked their diaries and, allowing for time to draw up, agree and sign a Service Level Agreement; put in place a project plan then raise the order, the earliest date was a fortnight hence - the 26th of November.

The paperwork was fully processed within the ensuing seven days, the agreed SLA signed on the 17th and Unisoft received the faxed order on 18th. The software and user guides were dispatched the next day.

The plan was to install the software early on the 26th, in readiness for that morning's 9 am list. Details of the hospital's staff members and their log-in IDs, together with the list of endoscopes were faxed to Unisoft and an empty database was primed by one of Unisoft's programmers on the 25th. All users' hospital network profiles were modified in advance, to map to the new drive that would be hosting the database.

Installation of the software and Image Capture kit began at 7:45 am on the 26th. Their live database was back-filled with the data prepared the previous day and testing completed in time for the beginning of the list. And so the first endoscopist received his training.

To begin with, that list's patients had to be added manually. At lunchtime a screen-scraped file of anonymised patient data was e-mailed to one of the Unisoft programmers. He e-mailed back the routine for reading the file the next day - the second day of training - and thus that afternoon's patients we pulled from the PMS PAS. A member of IT also went around the other PCs - consultant's offices and secretaries - and installed the client software from the server.

The Endoscopy team have agreed that there will be a steady transition from using Endoscribe to using Unisoft during December, with the objective of "going live" with Unisoft on 5th January. At that point the Endoscribe reports will be imported into the GI Reporting Tool's database, using Unisoft's TranScribe, and the former software will be uninstalled.