EMIS to roll out patient access to records

EMIS is set to roll out patient access to records across all of its practices.

The primary care IT supplier, which provides GP systems to nearly 60% of the UK market, has been testing patient record access for more than a year in a handful of practices.

In May the company announced it was looking for an additional 100 practices interested in enabling patients to view their records online. Dr David Stables, co-founder and clinical director of EMIS, said 120 practices had signed up but only about 30 practices had gone on to provide access to patients and there were currently about 20 to 30 record views each day.

He told EHI Primary Care: “It’s been a bit slower than we hoped so now we are planning to make it more widely available.”

Dr Stables said experience with other EMIS innovations, such as online appointment booking and repeat prescription requesting, showed take up was slow initially although 25% of EMIS practices now use online appointment booking and a higher percentage use repeat prescription requesting.

He added: “Patient access to records is a whole new way of thinking and there is also the time it takes to recruit patients. It’s just hard finding the time to do new things.”

Dr Stables said rollout to all EMIS practices would begin once the company had its strong authentification system in place. He added: “We are favouring the approach that strong authentification is what we will be recommending and are negotiating with the suppliers of the tokens at the moment.”

Dr Stables said EMIS was working closely on patient record access with projects such as MyHealthOnline in Wales and HealthSpace in England. Dr Gillian Braunold told EHI Primary Care this week that she expects patients in some of the early adopter areas to view their Summary Care Records over HealthSpace for the first time at the end of this month.

Fiona Barr