Publish date: 27 June 2022

A new digital solution called Beacon is being launched which will provide business continuity for Rio – the Trust’s Electronic Patient Record (EPR) system.

Beacon is being launched in preparation for the Rio system merge (scheduled for the weekend of Friday 8 July) but will be used for any future planned downtime or in the event Rio becomes unavailable.

Using Beacon, colleagues with EPR access, will be able to securely see a read-only view of essential, key patient information.  It is not intended to provide the full electronic patient record but will enable colleagues to search for and look-up information such as patient activity, progress notes and alerts. It will also provide a view of appointments and caseloads, as well as a ward view for inpatient teams.

Action for all Rio users

Two versions of Beacon have been developed to reflect the two separate instances of Rio in use within the Trust – Mersey Care Beacon and Mid Mersey Beacon.

Each application is securely managed and will only be made live for staff to access and use when Rio is unavailable.

The information held within each Beacon application runs off a daily system back-up, so the information is behind the live Rio systems:

  • Mersey Care Beacon: Data will run up to midnight the night before
  • Mid Mersey Beacon: Data is approximately one hour behind

An online learning module for each version of Beacon has been developed and Rio users are asked to complete this training to familiarise yourself with the tool prior to Friday 8 July 2022. The eLearning will take approximately 15 minutes to complete. 

To access the eLearning and for further information about Beacon, visit the Systems and tools page on YourSpace.