EMIS Web roll-out accelerates

The accelerated roll out of EMIS Web has reached 747 GP practices and thousands of practices are in the familiarisation process.

EMIS Group today released a trading update for the six months ended 30 June 2012.

It shows that during the first half of the year, the roll-out of EMIS Web accelerated dramatically, with 121 practices moved onto the new system last month.

There were also 1,385 unfulfilled orders for EMIS Web GP and 2,753 GP practices in the familiarisation service.

The update says EMIS Group has put in place the majority of the people and processes necessary to support a roll-out rate of 200 practices per month by September this year.

EMIS Group chief executive Sean Riddell told eHealth Insider the “controlled roll-out” period in 2011 allowed the company to look at the volume of calls coming in and address training issues in order to support an accelerated roll-out this year.

While the company will continue to support and maintain all of its software, Riddell expects all practices to eventually migrate to EMIS Web.

He said the clinical benefits and interoperability platform of the new system along with the functionality to fulfil the government promise to make transactional services and medical records available to patients, are all of great benefit to GPs.

If all practices chose to migrate, this could be completed by the end of 2013, but Riddell predicted some practices would want to stick with what they have for now.

He said cross organisational sharing of patient information is imperative in the evolving NHS, and EMIS Web supports this between the 57 clinical specialities using the system.

The development of the Medical Interoperability Gateway also allows sharing with other services and with INPS practices.

Riddell is expecting growth in sales of EMIS Community as the market opens up with the end of national contracts and a new framework agreement agreed for Southern trusts.

He added that it is good to see a move towards framework contracts being issued rather than single system awards over large areas that “kill off competition and innovation”.

EMIS is also in the midst of rebranding EMIS Access as Patient Access and moving transactional services on to the patient.co.uk website.

A further announcement from the group today is the forthcoming retirement of its chief financial officer, Phillip Woodrow, who will be succeeded by Peter Southby no later than mid-November.