by Eggplant, on Aug 22, 2019 9:04:45 AM
Overview
As one of the largest National Health Service (NHS) teaching Trusts in the UK, Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (OUH) is world-renowned for its excellence in healthcare, training and research thanks in part to its collaboration with the University of Oxford.
Through its 12,000 employees who serve patients at four hospitals and over 40 other locations across the region, the OUH provides a wide range of clinical services, specialist services (including Cardiac, Cancer, Musculoskeletal and Neurological Rehabilitation) and Medical Education.
Digital transformation is at the top of the Trust's agenda. The OUH is leading the way in health technology and sees investment in IT systems and processes as key to improving the delivery of its services and patient care.
The Trust implemented Cerner Millennium (Electronic Patient Record) software in 2011 to store and manage Patient data. The EPR solution provides a wide range of administrative and clinical functions, including patient registration, outpatient appointments, in-patient activity, emergency care, prescribing, diagnostics and clinical coding.
As with any public-funded healthcare organization that provides care free of charge, OUH faces constant financial pressure and resource constraints. Anything that can save staff time and improve efficiency will help save costs.
At the same time, OUH recognizes the value of dedicated IT and resources and, as such, boasts one of the largest IT departments in the UK for a hospital Trust.
The Challenge: A Cure for Manual Testing Inefficiencies
The EPR solution has been manually tested to provide technical assurance. Due to its complexity and size, it was recognized that any way of automating certain testing activities would be advantageous.
Setting up a new training domain for users [on Millennium] would require a large amount of data input to get patient records set up to enable staff to learn how to use the system. Doing that manually would be extremely labour intensive." — EPR Technical Application Analyst
Additionally, there are significant resourcing challenges with performing end-to-end system regression testing across multiple Millennium core modules and associated configurations.
We need to ensure that the system is not adversely impacted by a planned upgrade. The EPR Technical Application Test Manager adds:
But if we could run tests quickly with automation, we could cover more ground."
The fact that OUH would be relying more on electronic systems to advance its digital initiative was an excellent business case for a healthcare test automation solution.
The Solution: Eggplant as the Preferred Test Automation Tool
“We checked that all automation tools were reviewed against pre-defined requirements to ensure value for money and compatibility with Cerner Millennium. In the process, we also learned how user-friendly this product was. Specific evaluation criteria included cost, flexibility, scalability, quality of support, ease of use, and how well it worked with our system under test conditions. We required an automated test tool utilizing image recognition technology to test on the Citrix user interface.”
The Result: Providing Better Healthcare
Currently, Eggplant is being used to automate activities, including specific regression
testing, population of training domains, appointment scheduling and adding patient
observations.
The reliability, predictability, and consistency of automation with Eggplant
will help the OUH to increase testing capacity and save significant time.
When monitoring our live system, if we can pick up anything that inadvertently gets changed and fix it prior to user impact, that’s a big bonus. It’s about increasing capacity to identify and resolve live issues faster.”
With Eggplant, OUH has the potential to benefit from improved productivity, resource
efficiency, and faster completion of standard regression testing.
“All this is just the beginning of what we can do with Eggplant.”
Learn more
- Download a complimentary copy of The Forrester Wave™: Continuous Automation Testing Platforms, Q4 2022 report to learn why they named Eggplant a Leader.
- Get on a free trial to find out how Keysight Eggplant can expand automation to your entire testing process.
