iSoft progress with GP contracts

iSoft says it is making progress in the primary care sector, after completing its GP Systems of Choice (GPSoC) contract and finalising contracts with 20 Local Health Boards (LHBs) in Wales.

The company is now offering its Synergy and Premiere solutions to any English PCT through the GPSoC contract.

LHBs in Wales can choose between the Ganymede and Synergy GP solutions, which have been endorsed by NHS Wales.

iSoft’s head of primary care, Mark Gibbs, told EHI Primary Care: “Securing these contracts is great for iSoft and shows our commitment to supporting out customers. The next steps differ between the two countries, with implementations all set to begin in Wales.

“In England, the next step is to get technical authority to deploy and pass testing requirements for GP2GP. This weekend just gone, we had our national user group conference, and we have seen a lot of interest from PCTs to take up the hosted solution for virtual servers.”

As part of its proposed Level 4 hosted solution in England, iSoft will adopt virtualisation technology to partition and maintain separate databases for each GP practice. iSoft say the technology offers superior performance, reliability and added security.

Virtualisation adds a new layer to the machine allowing it to run multiple operating systems – load balancing on the data centre manages the utilisation – providing extra resources when needed and ending slow responses because a report is being run.

Gibbs said: “The advantage of the virtualised hosted solution is that PCTs can group together all data into just one server and still get all the benefits of fast access, and easy clinical audit and management. The virtual server can provide services over N3 with very small bandwidth requirements and offer practices the best of both worlds.”

iSoft say it is actively engaging with PCTs now and is looking forward to beginning deployments, as specified in theConnecting for Health GPSoC roadmap. It anticipates take up will be quick and completed by the start of the next financial year.

iSoft’s UK and Ireland managing director, Paul Richards, said: “Our customers can now retain their Synergy and Premiere solutions with the assurance that they will be developed to national standards with guaranteed service levels. And, it enables other GPs to select iSoft and iSoft applications on merit and for sound business reasons.”

Gibbs added that in the long run, iSoft will offer Lorenzo Primary Care under the GPSoC initiative.

In Wales, iSoft has kept its contracts with the 126 GP practices using the solutions, under the new Welsh GMS Systems and Framework Agreement.

Gibbs said: “We are working closely with our Welsh customers to ensure that they meet the new national specification for systems in GP practices.”

Under the new Welsh agreement, all LHBs in Wales can procure new clinical systems and services, on behalf of their constituent practices, that conform to the national standards and the requirements of the General Medical Services (GMS) contract for the use of IM&T.

Practices will also receive system maintenance and support according to defined standards ensuring that GPs across Wales have timely access to IM&T to manage patient care.

“This contract demonstrates our desire to have a strong, enduring relationship with both the NHS Wales Primary Care IM&T Programme and Informing Healthcare and confirms our commitment to providing customers with modern systems that meet the needs of their specific market,” Richards said.

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Joe Fernandez