HPA notifications sent electronically

TPP has worked with the Health Protection Agency on a pilot to allow SystmOne users to notify the agency of any suspected infectious disease cases electronically.

A diagnosis of particular infectious diseases, including meningitis, tuberculosis and food poisoning, must be notified by telephone or fax to a local HPA unit within three days of a clinician seeing a patient.

A TPP statement said the aim of the pilot was to streamline this process by allowing the information to be sent electronically, with as much case information as possible automatically populated from the patient record.

There is also an automatic prompting mechanism which triggers an alert to the GP within SystmOne when details of a notifiable disease are entered.

The pilot for the electronic messaging system began in November with a cohort of 17 practices across West Yorkshire. Several notifications have been sent electronically to the HPA for analysis, the majority of which have been regarding whooping cough cases.

The HPA is looking to extend the electronic notification system to all general practices in 2013-2014, once the benefits of the system have been assessed.

TPP said the new functionality is expected to significantly improve notification rates.

SystmOne has also been fully accredited by NHS Connecting for Health to send and receive patient records electronically using GP2GP functionality.

TPP piloted GP2GP at nine sites in Derbyshire and will now extend the functionality to an initial 100 SystmOne sites before implementing it for all users.

Nicola Hinchley, head of primary care informatics facilitation  the Derbyshire County PCT, said practices love the new functionality.

“GP2GP means they can get the records immediately rather than having to wait for weeks, and it saves time for the administrators, they just need to validate the record rather than keying everything in,” she said.

“It also makes a big difference for the GPs who know they can safely practice with a complete record in front of them.”