Advanced Expert Systems Ltd is pleased to announce that Derby Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has procured the PathoSys® system as part of its £14.9m, eight-year managed service contract with iSoft to upgrade IT systems, in advance of the NHS National Programme for IT. The trust placed the contract to ensure that it would have an electronic system in place when it opened the new City General Hospital.

PathoSys® was installed in and is now available at the pathology laboratory in the newly developed super hospital on the Derby City General Hospital site. Staff training and interface development for the Legacy CILMS system is now complete. PathoSys® is in final customer testing and is expected to go live during the summer 2006.

About The Trust

The Derby Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust runs the Derbyshire Royal Infirmary, the Derby City General Hospital (incorporating the Derbyshire Children’s Hospital), and the Nightingale Macmillan Continuing Care Unit.

The Trust is a Department of Health rated three-star Acute Trust providing a wide range of services including general medical, surgical, maternity, rehabilitation care and accident and emergency services. The Trust has a total of 1,157 beds and serve a population of over around 600,000 people in and around Southern Derbyshire.

The Trust employs 7,000 staff, from doctors and nurses to housekeepers and porters, with an annual budget of around £271million for the financial year 2005/6. This year the Trust will see and treat 162,000 people as inpatients, outpatients, emergency patients and day cases. This equates to around 638,000 visits from patients during the year.

The Trust is among the first to be awarded NHS Foundation Trust Status. The Trust became an NHS Foundation Trust on 1st July 2004 following approval of the application by the Secretary of State and the Independent Regulator. The Trust previously operated under the name of Southern Derbyshire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust.

The New Derby City Hospital

The Trust is currently building a brand new £333million super hospital on the Derby City General Hospital site. The new hospital is due for completion in 2008 and will provide the very latest in modern health care. It will incorporate the existing Derby Medical School, which is run in partnership with the University of Nottingham.

A number of clinics, wards and departments will transfer across to the new hospital building in May 2006, when the first phase of the construction will be completed.