EMIS set to pilot new e-records system

GP computer supplier EMIS is about to pilot its new electronic record system linking practices with community teams including district nurses, health visitors and physiotherapists.

PCS Web provides a common system for anyone working in the community with all patients’ data accessible from anywhere via the web-based application. The system offers community teams their own nursing care record system and provides both nurses and GPs online access to each others’ records.

The system is to be piloted in two primary care trusts from next month, Tower Hamlets and Calderdale PCTs.

Dr Kambiz Boomla, a partner at the Chrisp Street Health Centre, said his practice’s LV system has already synchronised its data with PCS Web and the surgery’s district nurses would begin to use the PCS Web record system soon.

He told EHI Primary Care: "What we will have is a shared care record that district nurses, health visitors and other community staff as well as practice teams will be able to see with updates in real time.

"It’s quite exciting because it’s something we have wanted in Tower Hamlets for five to ten years but the previous version of NHSnet was unable to deliver the speeds we needed. PCS Web over N3 is now blindingly fast, which is what we need for this to work."

Dr Boomla said a lot of work had been done on confidentiality with role-based access and a complex consent model with flexibility for different practices to adapt the policy to take account of different situations.

"It’s much more complex than what Connecting for Health is proposing so we will just have to see how it works."

Sean Riddell, deputy managing director of EMIS, said the system is compatible with EMIS LV, PCS and PCS Enterprise.

He added: “Many of our GP customers are happy with their existing systems for now. They are not about to become obsolete, and are being continually developed in line with Connecting for Health requirements. GPs can stream data from their current systems into PCS Web, so that they can share it with other primary care staff. They will not have to acquire a new system."

PCS Web was developed after Calderdale and Huddersfield Central PCTs commissioned EMIS to develop a common record system three years ago. The company says it realised that nurses had different workflow and record framework needs to GPs and set about designing a system to fit each nursing specialty, working in close consultation with nursing teams, rather than bolting on nursing functionality to its existing GP systems. It has also incorporated the nursing record classification system, Omaha, the first time the US-developed coding system has been used in the UK.

EMIS says its system is underpinned by a strong security model that allows data to be protected at every level, using confidentiality policies and record-sharing agreements.

Riddell added: “The clinicians have been driving it and we have been working as closely as possible with the coalface so that each time we have developed a different iteration it has gone back to the nursing teams for review.”

The first pilot is expected to get started in a couple of weeks, linking the Chrisp Street Health Centre in Tower Hamlets, London, with its district nursing teams.

The Yorkshire pilot will follow and Riddell said there had been considerable interest from PCTs with large numbers of EMIS practices.

PCS Web is built with Microsoft .NET technologies and the company says it can support millions of patient records in a common infrastructure. It has also been designed to interoperate with products from EMIS’s partner software companies, including PAERS (patient medical record access), ScriptSwitch (local prescribing advice) and Egton Arrivals (patient appointment check-in).

Riddell said once the community-based system had been bedded in the company would go on to work on the next version of its GP functionality, using web-based technologies as part of the company’s “convergence strategy” to move practices seamlessly from one version of its software to the next.