TPP has announced that it is piloting new scanning and workflow functionality, which will be rolled out to all its users over the next three months.
The healthcare IT supplier said its SystmOne software already includes scanning functionality, but the new development will add optical character recognition and a complete workflow.
The company said it had completed a successful first week of piloting at Friarwood Surgery in Pontefract. It is planning to conduct further deployments at ten more sites before rolling out more widely.
A spokesperson for TPP told EHI Primary Care: “Following the successful completion of our pilot, TPP plan to roll out this functionality to all our users over the next three months.
"We will be working closely with each primary care trust to plan training and deployment to ensure the roll-out is also a great success.”
TPP said the scanning module would be available free to existing users and included as a standard feature for all new units deploying SystmOne.
The new functionality gives users the ability to: Configure rules that will automatically suggest Read codes based on letter content; ‘drag and drop’ files from elsewhere on their computer in SystmOne; auto-match the scanned document to a patient by searching for the NHS Number within the text and; populate specific fields such as sender and recipient automatically.
The enhanced workflow functionality will allow users to send a patient’s scanned document with attached Read codes, problems and notes to multiple staff members within their organisation.
Users will also be able to search for letter details such as a particular hospital site or particular clinical problem.
TPP said the improvements would save valuable administration time and ensure GP practices remained paperlight.
Karen Chapman from Friarwood Surgery said: “The overall response from the practice has been really positive, particularly from the GPs. We love the fact that it’s an evolving system; any small changes we want to make can be put into development straight away.”
TPP said it had decided to develop its scanning functionality following suggestions from from users in the SystmOne chatroom.
Robyn Brooke, clinical systems analyst at TPP, said: “We’re offering a modern, complete workflow that’s fully integrated within the system at no extra cost to our users; it really does take SystmOne that extra step further.”