This was another rapid implementation in a large endoscopy unit - at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital .  The order for the GI Reporting Tool, four Image Capture kits and PAS interface was received on 28th May 2005 with a planned "go live" date a month later.

A project meeting was held on site on the 1st June attended by Unisoft's Steve Rainey, Dr Martin Lombard , Clinical Director Gastroenterology, together with four members of the endoscopy unit, five from IM&T, lead by Tom Lanigan , IT Manager, and two from the Mersey Endoscopy Training Centre. It was immediately obvious that there was an unqualified commitment from all concerned to ensure the installation, training and "go live" went as smoothly as possible.

A couple of hours was spent going over and agreeing every step of the project plan. The client software was to be installed on 27 PCs (plus 12 in the Training Centre) and Image Capture Kits were required in four endoscopy rooms. Unisoft reconnoitred the four rooms that same day in order to assess the cabling and connection requirements.

Installation, and administrator training, was planned for 15th June , four day's of user training scheduled for 21st to 24th June and the "go live" date set for the 29th June.

The project plan identified 75 staff members (names , job titles , roles and log in IDs) who needed to be set up on the system and who would also require training. These names, plus the model and serial numbers for the 51 endoscopes, was e-mailed over to Unisoft the following week so that an empty database could be pre-populated with this information in readiness for the installation.

Installation
Three members of Unisoft attended on the 15th June installation date. The first part of the morning was spent setting up the server and, as the rooms became available, installing and testing the four image capture kits. From mid-morning onwards the client software was installed, and icons set up, on the remaining 20+ PCs. These were located in the reception area, nurses' stations, consultants' and secretaries' offices and on the ward.

The interface , developed by Unisoft using Java and JDBC, for pulling demographic data from Healthcare Software System's CRIS had already been previously tested and therefore simply had to be installed on those PCs requiring this functionality.

A training session was laid on in the afternoon of that day for the four administrators of the system - held in one of the rooms in RLUH's well equipped Training Centre. Unisoft's applications automatically come with a separate training environment and their first task was to install the training system's client software on the 12 PCs in the room ( also in readiness for training the endoscopists the following week). The administrators were then trained in the non-medical aspects of the software - including adding new users, managing various settings and printing a variety of reports .

Training
With the system fully installed and tested in the one day (as per the original project plan) the endoscopy unit staff were ready to receive their training the following week. Four days had been allocated and Unisoft's David Simpson ran a mix of 1 - 2 hour courses over this period. 32 members of staff attended the courses and all left enthused and ready for going live the following week. Three of the registrars had already used the software in Bradford, Macclesfield and Manchester and they immediately volunteered to train the few unable to attend due to leave and other commitments. Unisoft's experience was put to good use during that week in configuring the system to suit both the department and the needs of the Mersey Training School.

Going live
Finally the department was ready to go live on Wednesday the 29th June, 31 days after the order had been placed . Everything was in place and apart from a couple of minor printer problems the whole department hit the ground running.

In conclusion, this project illustrates the success that can be achieved when strong clinical leadership is combined with an unqualified commitment from all involved in an implementation.