GPES secures final system supplier

The General Practice Extraction Service has 54 potential customers and expects to have all GP systems suppliers signed up from next week.

NHS Information Centre head of primary care strategy Dave Roberts told Primary Health Info 2012 that GPES is moving forward into its implementation phase.

The service, which extracts and communicates data from practices to the NHS IC, is still attracting "one or two" new customer applications a week.

Roberts said all the GP systems suppliers were now on board and the NHS IC confirmed that TPP is expected to sign-up next week.

EMIS, Microtest, iSoft and INPS have already signed up to develop the necessary GPES software.

Roberts said it was a “fairly major and complex thing to link together five GP systems” and the NHS IC had to have it right by April next year.

An independent advisory board has been set up to look at the benefits and risks of customer requests to extract practice data and recommend whether the request should proceed or changes are needed.

Neil Serougi is chair of the board that will review the customer extract request and confirm that it is consistent with the GPES information governance principles.

Bedfordshire GP Mary Hawking is also a member of the independent advisory board whose members are having an induction meeting today, Roberts added.

The board’s first official meeting is in May.