EMIS software now tracks kidney disease risk

EMIS have developed an upgrade to their PCS and LV general practice record software that trawls records to identify patients at risk of chronic kidney disease, in response to a user request.

Staffordshire GP Dai Evans asked EMIS to develop the add-on after he realised he had to manually trawl through records to find patients at risk, in accordance to the requirements of the GMS quality outcome framework (QoF).

"It took me a couple of hours’ work to get a list of patients, and I have a technical background," said Dr Evans. "I reckon that second time around it would have taken me about ten minutes – but very few practices would have the expertise to undertake this work at all. It’s quite tricky, as you need to match two sets of test results that are at least three months apart."

EMIS said that the update was developed "in record time", developed and sent to the practice for testing within a matter of days. The upgrade is now installed in the vast majority of EMIS practices.

A patient’s risk of chronic kidney disease is calculated from a number of blood test results held on record. The equation calculates whether the patient’s kidney is fully functional. Any patients that give cause for concern should be asked to attend a consultation.

Dr Evans pulled out the data from his records into a spreadsheet and calculated patients’ risk of CKD using the equation. However, for many practices this calculation would take a long time to do manually; hence the need for an automated system.

Sean Riddell, deputy managing director of EMIS, explained: "We take pride in responding to users’ needs as rapidly as possible, without needless bureaucracy. This sort of work points up our core ethos, which is to produce software written by doctors, for doctors."

He added that any GPs with any further ideas should come forward. "We are here to assist GPs in improving their patient care through efficient business processes and I would encourage any GP who has a view on how our systems could be further utilised to get in touch."

Dr Evans is a member of the EMIS National User Group. A spokesperson for EMIS said that user requests could be made to EMIS though the group as well.