Rapid Oracle reconfiguration and upgrade for Barts NHS provides vital COVID-19 response 

Barts Health NHS Trust, one of the largest healthcare providers in the UK, faced a monumental challenge in the fight against COVID-19. The pandemic necessitated the urgent construction and operation of a massive field hospital: NHS Nightingale. With time very much of the essence and with lives at stake, Barts Health needed a rapid solution to get its new hospital operational. 

The unprecedented scale and pace of the unfolding pandemic and the time constraints of Nightingale London’s launch meant that crucial procurement and financial systems simply weren’t in place. Based at the ExCeL conference centre in east London, the hospital would provide up to 500 intensive care beds, fully equipped with ventilators and oxygen. With essential medical supplies and equipment required immediately, this lack of infrastructure could have crippled the hospital’s ability to purchase the equipment and supplies it needed to hit the ground running.  

Barts Health turned to Version 1 as its longtime partner – we’d first worked with Barts in 2005 when we were contracted to implement Oracle E-Business Suite, so we understood its systems and the gravity of the situation.  

We were able to configure Barts’ Oracle E-Business Suite to accommodate Nightingale London’s specific needs within 48 hours. This included setting up additional approval workflows to ensure appropriate spending, particularly where charitable funding was involved. 

The solution we provided played a key role in the NHS Nightingale London’s lifesaving work. Our expertise enabled the hospital to procure essentials quickly and track spending responsibly, facilitating the critical care patients desperately needed.

Following the Nightingale project, we were asked to complete a major upgrade to Barts Oracle E-Business Suite estate to 12.2.9, with a simultaneous migration to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). This strictly-timelined, seven-month project begin in April 2020 and went live the following October. In addition to the upgrade, the project included the implementation of a number of scanning and reporting tools, and 3rd-party integrations for payroll, orders, and banking.

Bart Health also implemented new 12.2.9 features, such as Enterprise Command Centre with several bespoke enhancements we developed, including improved journal approvals using AME and Workflow.  

We built and configured 20 new servers within Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to deliver a system fit to take on anything the future holds for Barts Health.  

Outcomes

• Rapidly configured the existing Oracle E-Business Suite to meet Nightingale London’s specific requirements. 
• Implemented additional spending approval workflows to maintain financial control. 
• Facilitated timely procurement of essential medical supplies and equipment. 
• Enabled responsible financial tracking within the context of charitable funding sources. 
• Upgrade to Oracle E-Business suite to 12.2.9 on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. 
• First Version 1 customer to achieve an E-Business Suite upgrade while also migrating to Public Cloud (OCI) in one discreet project. 

At Barts, we originally planned the upgrade to 12.2.9 and migration to the Oracle Cloud before the Global Pandemic, and both ourselves and Version 1 had to adapt to a new way of managing this project – I must say that Version 1 stepped up to the challenge and we managed to still complete on time. They have a very good understanding of both the upgrade process and the migration into the Oracle Cloud – so there were no major issues that couldn’t be resolved.

– Jason Britchford, Head of Financial Systems, Barts Health NHS Trust