Frank Hester recognised in honours

TPP founder and chief executive, Frank Hester, has been given an OBE in the New Year’s Honours for services to healthcare.

TPP was established in 1999. It produces SystmOne clinical software, which is in widespread use in GP practices, and which is increasingly being taken up in other care settings.

In a statement, Hester said: “I have known for a few weeks that I am due to be given an OBE and it has been extremely difficult not to tell anyone as I have been so pleased,” he said. “It is such an honour to be recognised for a job that I get up and do every day.”

The New Year’s Honours recognised a number of senior doctors, nurses and managers, including Andrew Morris, the chief executive of Frimley Park Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

This was the first foundation trust to be rated “outstanding” by the Care Quality Commission, and has recently completed a major merger with neighbouring services.

Also knighted was Dr Sam Everington, who is best-known for his work at Bromley by Bow medical centre in London, which pioneered the ‘healthy living centre’ concept, and has taken up video consultations and telecare.

Everington also led the BMA through some of the rows over the National Programme for IT in the NHS, when he was a critic of Choose and Book. He has also been a trenchant critic of the present government’s Health and Social Care Act.

TPP is one of the ‘big two’ suppliers of IT systems to GP practices. The Leeds-based company is particularly strong in the North, Midlands and East, where it worked with CSC during the NPfIT-era. However, SystmOne is used by GPs across the country.

In 2012, the company announced that it had won its first, major acute trust contract when Airedale NHS Foundation Trust said it would adopt its patient administration, A&E and bed management functionality.

In the same year, it won a contract to roll-out community and child health systems to trusts in the South that had received nothing from NPfIT.

And in 2014, TPP made a significant move into mental health, when it announced that Plymouth Community Healthcare NHS Trust would adopt its SystmOne mental health module.  

Just before Christmas, it announced another significant move in the acute space, when it signed a contract with the Royal National Orthopaedic NHS Trust, so it can roll-out its e-prescribing and e-discharge systems.

In his statement, Hester added: “When the company started, I was inspired by the hard-working staff in the NHS and I really wanted to make a difference to their lives.

“That ethos still stands today, and I am thrilled that NHS technology has come such a long way in the last two decades. I look forward to continuing my work, both in the UK and abroad, and am very excited about picking up my OBE in the New Year.”