East Sussex Healthcare signs 10-year EPR deal with Nervecentre
East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust has signed a 10-year contract with Nervecentre to implement its cloud-native electronic patient record (EPR) system.
The system, called EmPoweR, will integrate patient administration, inpatient and outpatient care, electronic prescribing and medicine administration, order communications, and theatres into a single, cloud-native platform.
Roll out is planned to start with the initiation phase in May 2025 and will take two years to complete.
Andy Bissenden, associate of digital at East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust, said: “We’re taking a major step forward in our digital transformation journey.
“Nervecentre will bring us a modern and truly mobile, next-generation EPR to deliver better outcomes for patients and our operational/clinical teams.”
The availability of accurate data and having a comprehensive range of EPR functions together in one place is expected to help the trust make the working lives of its staff easier and more productive, while also improving the patient experience.
East Sussex Healthcare is actively collaborating with other acute trusts that are also implementing Nervecentre’s EPR.
Paul Volkaerts, chief executive at Nervecentre, said: “Nervecentre is the fastest-growing EPR in the country.
“Its full-breadth functionality, class-leading usability, and collaborative capabilities will encourage safe and efficient care for people living in East Sussex.
“We look forward to continuing to work with the trust in this exciting time of healthcare digitisation.”
The implementation comprises an initiation/discovery phase followed by three parallel tranches: the first migrating the existing premise Nervecentre solution to cloud followed by two more clinically focussed tranches.
East Sussex selected Nervecentre as its preferred EPR supplier in December 2024 and is the ninth acute trust to adopt the cloud-native platform.
In February 2025, University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust and Chesterfield Royal Hospital NHS Foundation Trust went live with Nervecentre’s EPR.
United Lincolnshire Teaching Hospitals NHS also has selected Nervecentre as its preferred EPR supplier in October last year.
Volkaerts spoke to Digital Health News, in December 2023 about his optimism that Nervecentre would expand its remit.
“We seem to have really good timing, which is a hard thing to achieve in business.
“We are hitting the frontline digitalisation procurement process at a point when we are a viable option.
“For a long time there has been a gap in the market for an EPR that is usable, focused on the NHS and hits the right price point,” he said.
