Vision 3 first GPSoC level 4 system

INPS has announced that its Vision clinical system has become the first GP system to achieve GP Systems of Choice accreditation for its hosted services.

NHS Connecting for Health has granted Vision 3 level 4 compliance under GPSoC, which means the system has met its standards for hosted services.

Primary care trusts can also claim GPSoC funding for Vision practices using the hosting service.

The system is the first to be accredited for hosting under GPSoC, more than 18 months after eight suppliers were awarded contracts to take part in the initiative.

INPS said it had designed and built a dual data centre solution, the Vision Managed Service, to meet CfH’s hosting standards. The company said the service had been live since September 2008 and it had now reached the final milestone of its contract to deliver the service.

More than 300 GP practices are already hosted on the Vision Managed Service and INPS said a further 300 practices are scheduled to migrate to the service by the third quarter of 2009.

Max Brighton, INPS managing director, said: “INPS has always led the way with hosted solutions for general practice.

“With over a quarter of our estate choosing a hosted deployment, progressing to GPSoC level 4 compliance has been a natural evolution of the proven Vision hosting environment.

“We are now able to offer our customers in England even more resilience and system availability, and at the same time enable PCTs to access additional funding.”

A version of Vision 3 is also supplied under BT’s local service provider contract in London. This has also met CfH’s standards for hosted services.

The other LSP-supplied system, TPP’s SystmOne, has yet to meet CfH’s standards for hosting services although it expects to do so shortly.

The other five system suppliers still on the GPSoC framework, Emis, CSC (offering SystmOne), Healthy Software, iSoft and Microtest, have also yet to be approved for hosting.

Supplier roadmaps on the CfH website, last updated at the beginning of February show that TPP expects to get approval for SystmOne by the end of March as does EMIS for its PCS system, but there are no dates for other systems and suppliers.

CSC has yet to sign its contract to supply TPP’s SystmOne under GPSoC and will supply SystmOne through its LSP contract only in the North, Midlands and East of England cluster.