Royal Marsden: NHS finance on Odoo CE
A full finance platform for a hospital pharmacy subsidiary, delivered in under three months, saving £200,000 in licence fees.
The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust - the world's first hospital dedicated to cancer diagnosis, treatment, research and education - was establishing RM Medicines, a wholly owned subsidiary to run pharmacy services. The subsidiary needed a complete financial system: one that would automate operations rather than add administrative headcount, avoid recurring licence costs, and remain flexible as the subsidiary evolved.
The Trust's own procurement research concluded that Odoo Community Edition was the right platform. Open Digital provided the solution architecture and delivery leadership to make it real.
The work
The implementation delivered the full financial core - general ledger, accounts payable, accounts receivable, fixed assets and cash management - cloud-hosted on Odoo CE, within an aggressive 2-3 month timeline.
Two integrations mattered most. The Trust's pharmacy system (WellSky, formerly JAC) manages prescribing, dispensing and procurement, so purchasing and financial data needed to flow into the ERP automatically and reliably for accounting and timely supplier invoicing. And as a UK VAT-registered business, RM Medicines needed HMRC Making Tax Digital compliance, delivered as a direct interface between Odoo and HMRC. Bank integration and enhanced reporting completed the platform, with training videos supplementing face-to-face training so staff could adopt the system at their own pace.
The reviewers said
The use of open source software allows flexibility and the use of apps, whilst remaining a very cost effective ERP solution. This example should encourage other organisations to consider open source software options.
One NHS Finance peer reviewer
This development most definitely deserves recognition. The organisation thought outside of the box and delivered savings both tangible and intangible and also improved the quality of its outputs whilst doing so.
One NHS Finance peer reviewer
The outcome
The system has been live since autumn 2020, with accounting for the subsidiary - including pharmacy and bank feeds - automated and integrated. Staff have a real-time, holistic view of financial and purchasing data, with native BI reporting reducing manual administration and freeing time for higher-value work.
By choosing open source over proprietary licensing, the Trust projected £200,000 in cost savings - and owns the platform in perpetuity, free to use, develop and improve as regulatory and internal needs change. Because the work is open, other NHS organisations can adopt and build on it: an exemplar of the public money, public code principle.
This project was peer reviewed and published by the One NHS Finance Innovation Forum as Innovation S1 (Embracing Open Source Technologies). The Forum publishes its innovations so that others can learn from them; the Forum's record of it requires a login.