Seetec withdraws from GPSoC

Seetec has announced it is to withdraw from the GP Systems of Choice programme, effective from 30 November, and quit the primary care market.

The company said it made the difficult decision following a decline in demand for its primary care system, GP Enterprise. Seetec has been a supplier to the NHS primary care market for more than 20 years.

The company says it plans to keep the system fully supported until 31 March 2009. However, from the end of November the Seetec system will cease to be connected with the Patient Demographic Service, Choose and Book and the Electronic Prescribing Service (EPS).

Seetec were awarded a GPSoC contract by Connecting for Health (CfH) in July 2007 competing with seven other suppliers – CSC, EMIS, INPS, iSoft, Healthy Software, Microtest and Waveform Solutions.

However, Seetec’s IT director, John Baumback, said the company could no longer sere a viable market and reluctantly decided to withdraw from the GPSoC initiative.

“Seetec has been in the primary care system market for over 20 years. We have always strived to deliver customer satisfaction through the delivery of high quality service and products but when a company can no longer see a viable market for their products there is only one regrettable decision that can be made,” said Baumback.

The company confirmed that EPS and the NHS Spine release 2008A compatibility testing will be the last GPSoC developments that it will release to customers.

Seetec will no longer be developing any further functionality for the initiative, which over 6,000 practices are involved in. Central funding from CfH for the Seetec system will also cease at the end of November.

A non-CfH compliant system will be available to existing customers until the end of May next year “to allow customers time to consider their plans for an alternative system.”

In a statement, the company added: “GPSoC represents a small part of Seetec’s overall activities and its tactical withdrawal will have absolutely no impact on Seetec’s other activities, such as consultancy and other services to the healthcare market which will continue on a ‘business as usual’ basis.

“Seetec continue with their other business areas, including software development in the training market, as well as great success in delivering JobCentrePlus and LSC [Learning and Skills Council] contracts. Seetec wishes to thank all their loyal customers for their support over the last 20 years.”

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