EMIS Web accreditation slips to January

EMIS Web is likely to receive NHS Connecting for Health accreditation in January, EMIS has announced.

The company told the annual meeting of the EMIS National User Group last week that CfH accreditation is now due in January, rather than in November as it predicted earlier this summer.

The long-awaited next generation system from EMIS, which has around 56% of the UK GP market, is currently undergoing internal testing.

Sean Riddell, managing director of EMIS, told EHI Primary Care that he expects version two of the system to complete internal testing by the end of October, having undergone 14,000 individual test script scenarios.

He added: “It’s fair to say EMIS Web has been a long time coming, but this is a system which is five to six times the size of LV or PCS and has to be scaled to take up to 50m records.”

Riddell said version two would include full GP functionality, cross organisational functionality, patient administration system functionality and the Microsoft Common User Interface.

The system would also be accredited for CfH functionality including Choose and Book, the Electronic Prescription Service Release 2, the Summary Care Record and GP2GP. It should also meet CfH standards for a hosted system.

Riddell said: “From our side, when it finishes internal testing – which we expect to happen by the end of October – we will be 100% confident in it and it will then be for CfH to complete their own testing.”

Riddell said he could see no reason why the accreditation date should slip beyond January. A total of 1,600 practices are already trialling the new system in parallel to their existing EMIS system.

The company’s plan is that GP practices should be able to run the two in parallel and switch over to the new system’s functionality at their own pace.

Riddell said the company had put plans in place for all practices to switch to EMIS Web over the next two and a half years if they wished to.

Dr Charlie Stuart-Buttle, chairman of the national user group, told the conference that the last year had been “a year of anticipation” and EMIS needed to deliver EMIS Web to its GP practices soon.

He added: “It’s been a long wait but I think it’s imminent now. I look forward to having it on the desktop in my practice in the next few months.”

Additional functionality unveiled at the conference included real time clinical dashboards, an advanced dispensing module and a patient record integration tool.

The company says this will speed up consultations by automatically generating information from the record, including safety warnings, risk assessments and Quality and Outcomes Framework information.

The conference also heard from two primary care trusts already using the system for data sharing initiatives.

Mark Caulfield, information services manager at NHS Tower Hamlets, said 80 to 90 clinical staff working in older people’s services were using the consultation mode with other community services. He also said more groups would be added soon.

Dr Simon Bowers and Kate Warriner from NHS Liverpool said progress over the last 12 months had included implementation of shared records services, integration with Adastra out of hours software, interoperability testing with laboratory system supplier Sunquest (formerly Anglia ICE) and interoperability testing with GP system supplier INPS.

Discussions are being held with other suppliers. Operational services using EMIS Web in Liverpool include an A&E diversion service, anticoagulation service, joint injections service and minor surgery service.

Clinicians in the Emergency Department at Royal Liverpool University Hospital also have access to patients’ GP records, as do clinicians running a Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI) clinic at Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital.

Community matrons are also using EMIS Web to access the full GP record with data sharing agreements in place. Dr Bowers said projects in the pipeline included delivery of discharge summaries through EMIS Web.