When Great Ormond Street Hospital was ready for its Epic EHR go-live, the London pediatric facility had plenty of friends from across the pond to help.
Seventy-three providers from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia volunteered for the IT mission, with airfare and lodging underwritten by Great Ormond Street Hospital.
They arrived in two shifts before and after Easter—each for a week at a time. CHOP is one of a handful of pediatric hospitals from across the globe participating in the install, which emphasized having nurses training nurses, specialists training specialists, and so on.
CHOP participants included physicians and nurses from numerous inpatient and outpatient departments, such as nephrology, hematology and immunology.
Dr. Bimal Desai, CHOP’s chief health informatics officer, said he offered clinicians the opportunity via email, not knowing how many would respond. “I was a little bit overwhelmed by the response we got,” he said. “Which is probably a bit naive, because no one’s going to turn down a free trip to London in the spring.”
But for CHOP, it’s not just about the trip. There’s a “deep historic connection,” Desai said.
Shortly after Great Ormond Street Hospital opened its doors in 1852, Dr. Francis West Lewis—who would go on to found CHOP—visited the London facility, which inspired him to establish a pediatric hospital in the U.S. CHOP opened in 1855.
This time around, “we were actually introduced by Epic,” Desai said of how he connected with leadership at Great Ormond Street Hospital before the go-live. CHOP deployed an Epic EHR in 2011. “Along the way, we kept running into each other at other conferences—Epic conferences, HIMSS.”
“It’s this really nice bookend,” he said.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated who paid for the CHOP employees' travel and lodging in London. Great Ormond Street Hospital took care of those expenses.
