EMIS Web roll-out to pick up this year

EMIS says it will roll out EMIS Web to 200 practices a month in the final quarter of this year, completing installations at the majority of the 1,400 practices on its order book in 2012.

The company had completed 44 EMIS Web installations by the end of 2010, 360 by the end of 2011 and has done 90 so far this year.

The next generation system will enable primary, secondary and community clinicians to view and contribute to a patient’s core GP record.

EHealth Insider reported in October last year that a number of GP practices were having their go-live dates put back while the company focused on issues such as training needs for new users.

EMIS said this was not due to any “underlying, showstopping” software issues, but part of an adopted controlled roll-out plan.

In its preliminary results for 2011, released this morning, the company says a significant acceleration of the roll-out of EMIS WEB is its “primary focus” for 2012.

It has completed 450 go-lives and has orders placed for a further 1,400 practices. Nearly 2,400 practices are in the familiarisation service and therefore planning to upgrade. There have also been 147 non-GP installations.

“We are building up the delivery capability to install in the order of 200 EMIS Web GP practices per month, and are accelerating the roll-out to reach this level during the fourth quarter of 2012,” a company statement says.

“This has involved a major expansion of internal resources for product stabilisation, development of additional functionality, and the additional training and field capacity needed to prepare for an acceleration of the roll-out.”

“We expect to have deployed the substantial majority of our outstanding EMIS Web GP order book (presently 1,401 practices) by the end of the current year.”

The company has increased its employee numbers from 782 to 900 and bought a £1.8m property in North Leeds to provide the extra capacity needed for growth.

The statement says EMIS successfully installed almost all of its GP system orders in Scotland last year and the 505 deployed systems are generating a recurring revenue stream of over £2m per annum.

EMIS is also in negotiations regarding the NHS Wales Framework Agreement, to include the delivery of a managed service – including the provision of GP clinical system software solutions via a central hosting arrangement – and support services.

EMIS Group chief executive Sean Riddell said the potential of EMIS Web meant the group was well positioned to “benefit from the ‘connect all’ strategies throughout the UK.”

“This is especially the case when coupled with the planned devolution of power to clinical commissioning groups, ring fencing of the public health budget and with information sharing being the key to better care outcomes and reduced cost,” he said.

Analysis from Numis Securities says the group’s plans for EMIS Web roll-outs in 2012 are “some way above our prior forecast of 1,200” and they now modelled on 1,300.

This combined with strong growth in the pharmacy division – Rx Systems – which increased revenues by 17% in 2011.

“We see the group’s recurring revenue growing strongly as EMIS Web is rolled out to GPs and continues to pick up traction elsewhere. However we expect continued investment in growth, so we leave our PBT (net profit before tax) forecast unchanged at £22.3m,” the analysis says.

EMIS Web was first unveiled in 2009 after five years of development. It received full roll-out approval in September 2010 when the company predicted the roll-out would be complete within two to four years.