TPP and Microtest sign up for MIG

More than 99% of UK GPs will be able to share patient data following the integration of TPP and Microtest with the Medical Interoperability Gateway.

Healthcare Gateway Ltd is a joint venture between EMIS and INPS to support data sharing and its MIG will now link records held on TPP’s SystmOne and Microtest’s Evolution software.

The MIG is a secure gateway to a set of services that can be used to exchange clinical data, which meets the NHS Interoperability Toolkit and HL7 interoperability standards.

High-profile projects in Liverpool and Cumbria are using the MIG to share information between GPs, out of hours, and some hospital services.

TPP clinical director Dr John Parry said the integration will provide clinicians in communities using a mix of systems with vital information at the right time.

SystmOne users will need to be ‘third party sharing’ enabled to use the gateway and can decide what parts of the patient record they want to share.

“There has been a strong demand for this integration from some of our customers now that the MIG is established and we are excited at the level of connectivity this will bring for these individuals,” Dr Parry said.

Chris Netherton, managing director of Microtest said: “Microtest have always told their practices that they will provide integration with the MIG in any areas that practices require this functionality – in the same way that HGL have committed to integrating with the Microtest Guru record sharing system in other areas".

Peter Anderson, Healthcare Gateway’s managing director, said the company’s strategic focus since setting up two years ago has been on “many-to-many connectivity”.

“We know from existing projects that the MIG enables healthcare providers to provide high quality clinical care, and frees them from paperwork to concentrate on their patients,” he said.

A press statement said this integration would “deliver a key foundation stone in realising health secretary Jeremy Hunt’s plans for a paperless NHS.”

Hunt announced on Wednesday that he wants the NHS to meet a series of deadlines towards having electronic records and communications in place by 2018.

At the Policy Exchange think-tank session about the access, security and confidentiality problems potentially posed by such a development, he indicated that he may have seen some of the information sharing projects supported by the MIG.

“I think the home of these [new, sharable] records may well be the GP surgery. We will be asking GPs to set up systems so there is access to anything that happened to you during your hospital visit.

“This will also be useful for hospital consultants; they will be able to see what happened to you before you reached hospital.”