Better Meds is live in South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust

Better delivered its e-prescribing and medicines administration (ePMA) solution Better Meds to the first mental health trust in the UK - the GDE site South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM). The successful commencement and continued rollout of the e-prescribing framework were delivered together with our implementation partner, CGI. 

Better delivered its e-prescribing and medicines administration (ePMA) solution for patients receiving mental health treatment and support in SLaM, its unit Bethlem Royal Hospital being the oldest mental health hospital in the world. SLaM will soon be followed by another GDE mental health trust, Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, and North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust. Both trusts are part of the open systems and platform technologies procurement framework that has been led by SLaM. 

The award-winning solution will allow the Trust to set up the exact procedures that best suit them and their patients through a combination of out-of-the-box offerings and personalisation. Eliminating transcribed medicine lists between paper charts and real-time remote access to patient medication records will result in more transparent care, helping prevent potential and avoidable mistakes. 

The Trust will be able to capture and transfer complete and standardised medicine lists between systems and care settings, which will allow for more accurate and timely summaries to be shared with general practitioners. Not only will this improve data quality for mental health trusts and hospitals, but it will also enhance patient safety while, in turn, improving efficiencies.

Stuart MacLellan, Acting Chief Information Officer, SLaM, said: “We are working to deliver our strategic aim to provide outstanding mental health care, as outlined in our five-year strategy Aiming High; Changing Lives. Our digital strategy is a vital part of this, which includes harnessing digital innovations, reducing digital exclusion, and enabling people to adopt technology to improve our services. The ePMA solution will improve patient safety while helping us to deliver high-quality care. We are proud of our partnership with Better and CGI – this is a huge step forward for us, and we are proud to be supporting the Trust’s strategy.”  

Christine Wadsworth, Clinical Lead at Better UK, said, “As a pharmacist who has worked on mental health wards in the past, it was an honour and privilege to be invited onto the first ward in the Maudsley Hospital to go live with Better Meds, along with my colleague Alja Babič from the Slovenian office and colleagues from CGI, to see first-hand the nurses and doctors adapt quickly and calmly to their new way of working. CGI has worked closely with the excellent SLaM project team to get to this point, and I give huge credit to all involved on a thorough and successful deployment.” 

Donna Kelly, Senior Vice President for South and Midlands at CGI in the UK, said, “The digitalisation of certain administrative procedures will help prevent possible human error and increase the accuracy of everyday procedures. The ePMA will aid the trusts in providing a better and more consistent service, offering patients an improved quality of care. We are proud to support the NHS and look forward to continuing to support trusts with technological solutions in the future.”  

Better Meds is implemented in 10 Trusts across the UK, New Zealand, Australia, and Slovenia.