EMIS Web to provide shared care record across Cheshire

The pan-Cheshire initiative will be a major implementation of the EMIS Web cross-organisational healthcare system outside GP surgeries, with 933 EMIS Web access points installed in acute trusts, mental health facilities, clinics and some community facilities.

These terminals will allow the whole primary healthcare team – including community nurses, district nurses and physiotherapists – to record their own patient interventions in EMIS Web and for clinicians across primary and secondary care to view relevant information from the GP patient record – subject to patient consent and locally-agreed data-sharing protocols.

The contract has been signed by Central & Eastern Cheshire PCT on behalf of the eight organisations – including PCTs, NHS Foundation trusts and community healthcare organisations – that form the Central and Eastern Cheshire health community and the Western Cheshire health community. Implementation of the new system will begin during 2011.

Julie Murdy, Acting Head of ICT projects for Cheshire ICT Service, said: “This will allow our primary and secondary care clinicians to access vital information about their patients’ health, and for the whole team to work together to provide joined up care to patients.”

Sean Riddell, Chief Executive of EMIS Group said: “This is a very exciting contract for us, because it will realise the full potential of EMIS Web as a system for the whole healthcare team, not just GPs.

“While other parts of the country are already using EMIS Web to link up different healthcare teams, the Cheshire project will be our biggest healthcare community installation to date.”

The new contract, together with the GPSoC contract, means that EMIS Web will become the main clinical information system for the whole primary healthcare team – approximately 4,000 health professionals (GPs and community staff) – in the Central and Eastern Cheshire PCT and NHS Western Cheshire PCT areas.

The shared care record will be extended to include non-EMIS GP practices, so that all patients can benefit from joined-up healthcare.

Shared care records via EMIS Web are already being piloted in other parts of the UK. In Liverpool, for example, record sharing between EMIS and hospital systems provider System C allows clinicians working in urgent care at Aintree Hospital to view GP patient records held in EMIS Web.