GP computer supplier EMIS is to roll out the next generation of its primary care software, EMIS Web, to 1,000 practices from this month.
The company says EMIS Web will provide a common clinical record that can be shared by GPs and community healthcare teams with data accessible anywhere via the web-based application.
The aim is for the software to work initially alongside GP practices’ existing systems, such as EMIS LV or PCS, with practices able to stream data into the new system from their existing software which can then be shared by others such as district nurses or health visitors and even accident and emergency departments if the practice and the patient chooses. The system includes both GP and community functionality.
The version of EMIS Web to be used by practices from this month is a “clinical record viewer” but Sean Riddell, managing director of EMIS, said the system would add new modules over the next year so that it would eventually replace LV and PCS as practices choose to move over.
He told EHI Primary Care: “Its not going to remove the functionality of LV and PCS and people can use the new software functions over a period of time that they are comfortable with.”
Rollout to 1,000 practices will begin this month and EMIS hopes it will be complete by early 2007. After a period of review the system will then be made available to the rest of EMIS’ practices in the UK.
The system will enable all practices using it to electronically exchange records when patients move to another EMIS Web practice as GP2GP functionality is built into it. Riddell added: “It will also enable practices to view their data in the most sophisticated way and the search and reporting module will mean that any changes made in the local database will be reflected in the central system.”
EMIS Web will operate from a central-hosted data centre but practices will continue to retain their local server based systems as well.
Riddell added: “To start with local server based sites will stream to the centre and then eventually when the central hosted system is their primary database, the centre will be stream back a local copy. “
The system has been piloted by practices and community teams in Kirklees and Calderdale Primary Care Trust and Tower Hamlets Primary Care Trust which have been testing out the interoperability with different clinical specialties.
Riddell said EMIS Web, which was initially called PCS Web, is part of the company’s “convergence strategy” to move practices seamlessly from one version of its software to the next.
Riddell added: “No health care company will survive in the future if you are not fully interoperable and that is what this gives us.”