Eliminating Vast Paper Journeys for University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust

The challenge.

Following the merger of two organisations, UHSX faced significant disparities in technology, processes, and access to patient information across its sites. While one half of the Trust had experience using an electronic document management system (EDMS), the other remained heavily reliant on paper records. Medical records were stored in a physical warehouse separate from the main hospital sites, making access to patient information both time consuming and unreliable. Retrieval of notes outside of standard working hours was extremely limited, creating delays and challenges for clinical teams.

The scale of the issue was vast. The Trust’s courier service, responsible for transporting paper records between sites, was found to cover the equivalent of three and a half journeys around the world every year, highlighting the operational burden and inefficiency of maintaining paper-based processes at scale. 

Establishing a robust EDMS was a strategic imperative. The EDMS is a foundational component of the Trust’s electronic patient record (EPR) and enabled legacy records to be digitised and accessible ahead of wider EPR digital transformation.

The solution.

Mizaic worked in partnership with the Trust to deploy MediViewer across both legacy organisations, delivering one of the largest and most complex EDMS implementations undertaken in the NHS. 

The rollout combined a structured, specialty-by-specialty approach across the eastern sites, with a highly coordinated transition from the incumbent system in the west – covering migrations from Panda and their electronic document repository (EDR) in the east and Evolve in the west. 

Today, the solution supports more than 7,000 users across all UHSussex sites, bringing together data from more than 30 sources and tens of millions of digitised and migrated documents into a single, unified patient record.

Mizaic worked closely with the Trust’s dedicated change management team to support the early stages of implementation and establish a strong foundation for rollout. During the early adopter phase in paediatrics, Mizaic’s transformation team played a hands-on role, working alongside clinical leads, ward teams, and senior stakeholders to shape how MediViewer would be used in practice. From there, the Trust’s Change team took a leading role in preparing services for go-live, using face-to-face engagement and operational ‘dry runs’ to build confidence and ensure teams were ready for the transition. Drawing on the learnings from the early adopter phase with Mizaic, robust templates were put in place alongside a structured approach that enabled the wider rollout across specialties. 

Working as an extension of the Trust’s team, Mizaic has remained closely engaged through regular touchpoints, clinical steering groups, and ongoing review sessions, ensuring a deep understanding of how MediViewer is used in practice.

This collaborative dynamic has enabled feedback from frontline users to directly shape the evolution of the solution, with Mizaic actively listening, validating ideas across its wider customer base, and feeding enhancements into the product roadmap

The Trust’s Change team has played a pivotal role in gathering crucial feedback through its multiple touchpoints with frontline teams. Its forward-thinking, supported approach to digital change (with ongoing optimisation and Rapid Improvement Events, which are focused, multi-day workshops that analyse and enhance specific processes) has helped ensure clinician-suggested improvements are captured, understood, and translated into practical enhancements that make MediViewer work effectively for the people using it every day. This includes creating a list view of documents – to replicate legacy system functionality for familiarity – and expanded document capture, which spans ED casualty attendance sheets, paediatric diabetes records, orthodontic records, and occupational therapy records for a more complete patient record.

Key highlights / Trust benefits.

• Eliminated reliance on large-scale paper transport and storage, significantly improving access to patient records across all sites and reducing operational burden and environmental impact. 

• Improved operational efficiency across clinical and administrative teams, including faster access to records and a 60% reduction in clinical coding time following process optimisation.

• Productivity and record storage rationalisation is estimated to generate £5 million in savings, over the lifetime of the programme.

• Enabled the evolution of the Health Records service, shifting focus from managing physical files to overseeing digital records and governance, aligning it with a modern way of working.

• Delivered a single, unified patient record, integrating data from more than 30 sources and enabling 24/7 access for more efficient clinical decision making and continuity of care.

• Successfully engaged over 7,000 staff across more than 65 specialties, working with the Trust to drive high levels of adoption through a dedicated, people-first change management approach – achieving a 96% satisfaction rate. 

• Ensured a culture of continuous improvement, as the system delivered value beyond initial deployment. Through Trust-led Rapid Improvement Events, the site now experiences reduced duplication and variation, and there is now better integration with eRS, strengthened governance, and consistency in how information flows through the Trust.

• Supported the repositioning of the Trust’s digital function as an enabler of change instead of a barrier, demonstrating how a collaborative, well-supported rollout can drive meaningful transformation across the organisation.

We really benefitted from the partnership approach. With Mizaic, we’ve had direct access to the team, rapid responses, and valuable collaboration throughout – so this wasn’t simply a supplier handing over technology. The phased rollout across 65+ specialties went smoothly, helping us to standardise and continually refine processes and bring our disparate sites on to a single, unified patient record.”

- Zak Priestley, EDMS senior change agent, University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust