Safely Decommission Legacy Clinical Systems with RLDatix Galen

Transitioning to a new EPR shouldn’t mean losing a single diagnosis, handwritten note, or piece of clinical context. NHS Trusts need to retire ageing systems without compromising patient safety, disrupting productivity, or losing data integrity. This page is designed for NHS digital transformation leaders, EPR programme teams, and clinical safety leads exploring safer approaches to clinical archiving and migration. The short overview shows how RLDatix Galen, and its Unified Data Platform, helps organisations safely retire legacy systems, keep historical patient data clinically useful within the clinical workflow, and support NHS records management requirements.

Watch a short overview of how RLDatix Galen helps NHS Trusts safely decommission legacy clinical systems while keeping historical patient records accessible within the clinical workflow.

Key outcomes from intelligent clinical archiving and migration

Proven in more than 1,500 clinical projects, with over 300 million patient records migrated and 10 billon files and images archived, RLDatix Galen is recognised as a Best in KLAS platform, helping NHS Trusts and health systems:

• Reduce legacy digital estate costs by up to 95%
• Clinicians can access historical information directly within the EPR in a single click
• AI-enabled semantic search and optical character recognition (OCR) help clinicians quickly find relevant information from old notes, scans, and PDFs
• Full data fidelity preserved, including metadata and historical change records
• Highly configurable retention policies, supporting both day-one readiness and long-term statutory retention

How RLDatix Galen supports clinical archiving and migration

Many NHS Trusts continue paying to maintain ageing clinical systems purely to preserve access to historical patient information. This creates fragmented patient records across departments, alongside statutory retention obligations that prevent simple system switch-off. Migrating the right information into the EPR, while maintaining a unified historical patient record, supports clinical decision-making, reduces costs, and helps organisations remain compliant.

At the heart of RLDatix Galen is the Unified Data Platform (UDP). It extracts and structures data from legacy systems, normalising, cleansing, and de-duplicating information so it can be mapped into the clinical and technical workflows of the target EPR. The platform has supported the migration of billions of clinical data points across large-scale transformation programmes.

In practice, clinicians access archived records directly within the EPR. Digital and records teams retire legacy estates with confidence, knowing historical information remains accessible, clinically useful, and appropriately governed.

The impact on Trusts and where intelligent archiving applies

Before

Trusts running multiple legacy estates carry significant cost and operational risk. Clinicians chase records across disconnected systems and navigate multiple logins to find historical context. IT teams maintain ageing infrastructure long past its useful life. Patient data sits in obsolete formats, technically retained, but not always clinically useful.

After

Legacy systems are safely decommissioned. A single click gives clinicians an instant, unified view of historical patient data within the EPR and in clinical context. AI semantic search and OCR make decades of clinical history navigable in seconds, including content hidden in old notes, scans, and PDFs. Historical information remains accessible within everyday clinical workflows while legacy maintenance costs fall by up to 95%. Records remain accessible, retained appropriately, and aligned to NHS records management requirements.

Where this approach applies

• NHS Trusts and private health systems running multiple legacy clinical and departmental systems
• Acute, community, and mental health providers with significant archived data estates
• Hospital groups and multi-site organisations consolidating onto a single EPR
• Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) and provider collaboratives standardising data access
• Healthcare environments where clinicians rely on rapid access to longitudinal patient records

Video transcript

Transitioning to a new EPR shouldn’t mean losing a single diagnosis, a handwritten note or the context that informs safe clinical decisions. It should be a simple process of migrating legacy data so it is easy to access within your EPR, without risking patient safety, reducing productivity or losing any clinical data.

With RLDatix Galen, you can ensure your EPR transition is seamless and ready for launch.

At the heart of the process lies our Unified Data Platform. Our UDP extracts complete data from legacy systems to provide a definitive, fully structured and authoritative dataset for future use.

Proven in over 1,500 clinical projects, our Best in KLAS platform normalises, cleans and de-duplicates data from any legacy system, in any format, into the clinical language and technical workflows of your new EPR.

We map and migrate billions of data points, preserving its integrity and ensuring that nothing is missed, so that the right data is available at launch, and clinicians don’t miss a beat.

Our intelligent clinical archive has built-in AI-enabled semantic search and optical character recognition that allows clinicians to quickly find information, even those bits hidden in old notes, scans and PDF, to surface what they need without ever leaving their new EPR.

A single click provides an instant, unified view of legacy data, in context and at the point of care, meaning they can spend less time chasing records or navigating manual logins, and more time focusing on the patient.

We bridge the gap between innovation and obligation so you can safely decommission outdated systems. We’ll give you a single historical patient record, both within your EPR and in a clinical archive with highly configurable retention rules, that meets NHS Records Management standards and reduces legacy maintenance costs by up to 95%.

From day-one readiness to 25-year statutory retention, RLDatix Galen ensures your patient history is never lost, always accessible in context and ready for what comes next.

Frequently asked questions

What is intelligent clinical archiving and migration?
Intelligent clinical archiving and migration is the process of safely transferring patient data out of legacy clinical systems into a unified archive that keeps records clinically useful, not just technically retained. With RLDatix Galen, the Unified Data Platform normalises, cleans, and de-duplicates legacy data into the clinical language and workflows of the new EPR, so clinicians retain access to historical context while Trusts decommission outdated systems.

Can RLDatix Galen work alongside our new EPR?
Yes. RLDatix Galen is designed to support EPR transitions, with the Unified Data Platform surfacing archived clinical data directly inside the new EPR. A single click gives clinicians an instant, unified view of legacy data in context, without requiring separate logins or disconnected workflows. The right data is available from day one, with billions of data points mapped and migrated to preserve integrity through go-live.

Which legacy clinical systems can be decommissioned with this approach?
RLDatix Galen supports decommissioning across the full clinical estate, including PAS, departmental clinical systems, pharmacy systems, A&E and urgent care platforms, maternity and neonatal systems, cardiology and oncology applications, and PACS/imaging. Trusts can retire systems individually or as part of a wider consolidation programme. Archived data remains accessible through a single point of entry, both inside the live EPR and within the clinical archive.

How does intelligent archiving support clinical safety and continuity of care?
Clinical safety depends on continuous access to a patient’s full history. RLDatix Galen migrates billions of data points while preserving data integrity, ensuring nothing is missed at launch. AI-enabled semantic search and optical character recognition surface information from old notes, scans, and PDFs directly inside the EPR. Clinicians retain access to the right information in context and at the point of care, supporting safer clinical decisions.

Does intelligent archiving meet NHS Records Management and retention standards?
Yes. RLDatix Galen supports NHS Records Management requirements and retention obligations, from day-one readiness through long-term statutory retention. Highly configurable retention policies allow Trusts to apply the right rules by record type, specialty, or source system. Data remains accessible regardless of the original application, supporting medico-legal, governance, and regulatory requirements across acute, community, mental health, and primary care settings.

Can the platform handle unstructured data like handwritten notes and scans?
Yes. The Unified Data Platform ingests structured records, handwritten notes, scanned documents, and PDFs. Optical character recognition extracts text from scanned and image-based records, while AI-enabled semantic search helps clinicians find relevant historical context across the archive in seconds, including information buried within old notes, scans, and PDFs. Results surface directly inside the EPR without disrupting the clinical workflow.