Dr Gillian Braunold, one of the clinical leads for the NHS National Programme for IT has told EHI Primary Care that new arrangements will shortly be announced on how GPs can become involved in informing the overseas development of new clinical systems. A team of 10-15 GPs is currently being recruited.
The GP clinical lead said that she had already received an enthusiastic response from clinicians looking to help inform the development of new clinical software from iSoft and IDX in Chennai, India and Seattle, USA, respectively.
She was also at pains to stress that specific arrangements had been drawn up to involve GPs. "We will be dealing with the GP interface in a different way." This new approach had yet to be approved by the NHS Care Records Development Board.
Once approval had been received a team of 10-15 GPs in total would be created, who would be sent out in twos to Chennai. "I have six already lined up and interviews with four more in the next week," Dr Braunold said a week ago
She stressed that there would be further opportunities for interested clinicians to become involved: "I want to fill a database with clinicians". One such opportunity may be to become an alpha test site for Lorenzo’s primary care module. "We’re looking to do alpha testing in a handful of sites," said Dr Braunold.
The key traits being looked for in interested GPs are "confident self-starters who can work well in teams," explained Dr Braunold. "Above all else they need to be passionate about the power of IT to transform people’s lives for the better."
Dr Braunold said that work with GPs would be based out of Chennai, where iSoft is carrying out development work on its Lorenzo clinical IT system. No NHS GPs are being sought to guide development work by IDX in Seattle or Cerner in Kansas. "We’re not looking for GPs to go out to Seattle," she confirmed.
EHI understands through reliable industry sources that neither of the companies is currently developing a GP system designed to meet the requirements of the NHS, although this had previously been a requirement that IDX was meant to deliver in London and the South.
Instead it now looks as InPractice Systems will provide be the GP system offered by BT as LSP in London and Fujitsu Alliance in the South.