GP2GP milestone reached

Tags: CfH Community EMIS GP GP2GP INPS iSoft Microtest Vision

28 Jan 2009

More than 5,000 GP practices are now using GP2GP software to transfer electronic records, NHS Connecting for Health has announced.

The latest uptake figures for the CfH project cover practices using EMIS LV and INPS Vision 3 clinical systems, the only two GP systems currently accredited for GP2GP.

CfH said that reaching 5,000 GP practices was a major milestone and that the project that had been a collaborative effort between the agency, primary care trusts, strategic health authorities, GP professional bodies and clinical system suppliers.

Further clinical system suppliers and software products are planned to join the rollout this year.

Sean Riddell, managing director of EMIS, said 70% of EMIS practices in England are now able to complete record transfers.

He added: “The success of this project is a demonstration of true collaborative working between all parties highlighting that joined up healthcare can give real benefits to GPs and patients.”

Max Brighton, managing director of INPS, said GP2GP had been deployed to the vast majority of Vision practices in England.

He added: “The project has enjoyed widespread support from the both the GP community and CfH team and this has helped to ensure that the real benefits to patients and clinicians were delivered in a timely fashion and covering a very high percentage of the population in England.”

Earlier this week Tony Megaw, head of primary care IT at NHS Yorkshire and the Humber, told EHI Primary Care that GP2GP functionality was hoped to be included in the next version of TPP’s SystmOne, due for release later this year, subject to the success of work to map Read 3 to Read 2 codes.

Latest supplier roadmaps for compliance with CfH projects also show Microtest and iSoft plan to achieve GP2GP accreditation by the end of the year.

Fiona Barr

Reader's Comments

Unsung success

cunpr@globalnet.co.uk

28 Jan 09 09:01

Full exchange of the entire GP record including documents from one site to another is the real success story in primary care IT of the last few years. The project team, suppliers and practices should be congratulated for acheiving orders of magnitude more "joined upness" (sic) than anything else. Connecting everyone to a single system palls in comparison to the potential of allowing disparate (and thus highly user responsive) systems to properly interoperate. This should be being shouted loudly from the roof tops as our unsung hero in NHS IT but because it undermines the political ambitions it is conveniently ignored.

Well said

roz@foads.co.uk

28 Jan 09 22:01

Well said Paul, just think how the take up and appreciation of the National Programme could have been a different story if they had followed a robust and efficient implementation of N3 (including enough bandwidth from the start) with GP2GP, adding in EPS once that had thoroughly bedded down, and only thinking about electronic booking at a much later stage?

The next stage is to get suppliers to issue receipts to the sending practice. Then the paper trail can be turned off and a forest of trees saved, not to mention staff time and ink cartridges!