The trust that runs Peterborough City, Hinchingbrooke and Stamford and Rutland hospitals has successfully installed a major new computer system which stores detailed information on all patients.

The huge project saw 1.67million current and archived patient records transferred from two separate patient administration systems into one new system which will also serve trust patients using outpatient and radiology services at Doddington Hospital and the Princess of Wales Hospital, in Ely.

At the same time, the trust merged the systems in use in its emergency departments and theatres across Peterborough City and Hinchingbrooke hospitals, to provide greater continuity across its sites.

David Pratt, director of finance, and executive sponsor of the project, said: "This new system takes us another step further in unifying our trust since the merger of Peterborough and Stamford hospitals with Hinchingbrooke Hospital in April 2017.

"Our clinical staff who work across our hospital sites have previously had to navigate two different clinical systems to perform key tasks, such as looking up test results, accessing patient correspondence and dictating letters. Our new patient administration system provides one system for all these functions. This enables us to provide more seamless care for patients and will improve safety and increase efficiency.

"I would like to thank our staff for their support in implementing this new system. We had to revert to paper-based operations while the switch over took place, and staff were fantastic in dealing with this while keeping our services running as normal.

"They have been undertaking training to familiarise themselves with the new arrangements and this has gone well, with more than 4,000 individuals completing training.

"Our teams have worked hard to keep the impact on patients to a minimum. I would like to thank any patients who may have noticed a change to the usual services while the new system has been embedded in the past few weeks."