Overview

St. Vincent’s Luminaries provide specialist guidance from a network of senior industry leaders with executive experience across crucial healthcare domains.

The service is delivered in a flexible yet structured way, engaging at all levels of an organisation — from Trust Executive and Non-Executive Directors, Chief Executives, and Chief Clinical/Nursing Information Officers through to programme and project leads.

Our Senior Health Advisors bring real-world insight from prior and current roles within the NHS, EPR suppliers, and System Integrator organisations.

The Challenge

A North-West Trust began its EPR journey with the selection of Cerner Millennium and associated solutions — a transformational change typically undertaken only once every 10–15 years.

They recognised that the programme’s success would depend on making critical early decisions and embedding strong strategies to secure the expected benefits and minimise disruption.

When reviewing the EPR implementation experiences of their peers, the Trust saw how narrow the margin is between a smooth transition and a programme that requires costly stabilisation work.

The leadership team concluded they would gain significant value from access to trusted experts who had already navigated this path on similar large-scale programmes.

The Solution

Luminaries Advisory Service

After understanding their needs, St. Vincent’s created a tailored engagement model through our Advisory and Assurance Panel — designed to provide strategic advice to the newly formed EPR delivery team, and confidence to the Trust’s Executive Board.

The support structure included:

• Weekly programme-related sessions with documented outputs
• Monthly meetings with the Trust Executive team, with a flexible, co-created agenda
• 1:1 guidance and mentorship sessions arranged as required

Topics were chosen by the Trust to align with their programme priorities and current stage of their EPR journey, ensuring each conversation was directly relevant and impactful.

The Outcome

The engagement has been in place since April 2021 and has helped the Trust navigate several critical decision points — including their data migration approach and their business transformation engagement model.

This support has reinforced their strategies in key areas such as:

• Applying a Stop–Start–Continue framework to shape priorities
• Strengthening clinical and operational team governance and engagement
• Driving confident, well-structured programme delivery

As part of the mentorship element, we also connected their newly appointed Chief Clinical Information Officer with peers at another organisation successfully using Cerner Millennium — building a trusted network for ongoing support and shared learning.