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Action required – Essential Unity update resulting in full Unity downtime tonight from 1am – 3am

February 23, 2021

There is an essential update to the Unity databases being carried out by our supporting vendor Cerner tonight (Wednesday 24 February) from 1am – 3am.

This is required to ensure Unity will continue to work as expected when the clocks go forward in spring.

This will result in Unity being unavailable for up to 2 hours as the update requires a number of database cycles and restarts to take place in order to apply the change.

All departments will be required to revert to business continuity plans and have 724 machines ready and utilise 724 boxes.  Below are the key systems/services affected:

  • Patients new to the Trust can be registered on iPM (Lorenzo) but will not transfer to UNITY / FirstNet until after the downtime.
  • Patient details update messaging from iPM (Lorenzo) will be queued and sent into UNITY after the downtime.
  • Clinical Documentation and Medication Administration will be unavailable until after the downtime and will need to be completed using medication charts printed from 724.
  • Blood Tests and Imaging requests will be unavailable to order electronically; please use handwritten request forms to request Pathology during the downtime; however results will be available via the iLab web page.
  • Emergency Departments will have to print records from 724 for ALL currently registered patients to allow them to continue delivering care; all patients arriving during the downtime will have to be recorded using the ED Business Continuity tool and have all care documented on paper (BCP).
  • Patients new to the Trust will not be able to be visible in Medisoft (This only applies to patients booked into FirstNet if they are registered in iPM and admitted directly to a ward then these will go to Medisoft as normal).
  • New results will not be visible in Unity during this time but will be queued and sent into UNITY after the downtime.
  • Inpatients admitted from ED will need to be manually admitted on iPM and will be queued and sent into UNITY after the downtime.
  • Inpatients transferred between Wards will need to be retrospectively entered into UNITY and transferred in CapMan after the downtime.
  • Inpatients discharged will need to be retrospectively entered and discharged from UNITY after the downtime.

Please be assured meetings have been held to ensure all departments are fully aware of action required in order to accommodate the update.

The activity will be closely monitored at all times both during and after the systems are back up by a designated operational and Informatics management cell along with an additional CNP on site to support teams.  Desktop Alerts will be released from 11pm reminding colleagues of the planned downtime and need to revert to BCPs.

In the meantime please do call the 24 hour IT service desk if you have any further queries on ext 4050 or 0121 507 4050 for home workers.