NHS England approves new clinical IT system for general practice
A new IT system for general practice has been approved by NHS England, the commissioner has announced today.
The new core clinical GP IT system created by Medicus Health is already live in ‘four early-adopting sites’, serving over 42,000 patients in total, and will now available to practices across the country, NHS England said today.
The cloud-based technology will ‘support the integration of primary care with other settings’, including care homes and vaccination centres, and can be used on different devices such as tablets.
NHS England described the move as the ‘first shake-up of the GP IT market in a quarter of a century’. However, the RCGP warned that further assurances are needed around data security, and that a concern for practices will be the ‘considerable workload and disruption’ associated with changing systems.
This is the first new supplier to be ‘fully assured’ through NHS England’s Tech Innovation Framework, which ensures new products are ‘fully compliant’ on information governance, clinical safety and data protection, while integrating with NHS infrastructure such as the Electronic Prescription Service, NHS e-Referral Service and NHS App.
It is up to practices whether they want to adopt this system as this approval gives them another option of core GP IT systems to choose from, NHS England clarified.
Medicus Health integrates with 24 national NHS services and more than 25 ICBs are exploring how they can support adoption of the new system.
It is expected more core GP IT systems that meet the standards of the Tech Innovation Framework will become available by April 2026, ‘offering a wider choice for practices’, NHS England added.
NHS England national director of primary care Dr Amanda Doyle said: ‘This new generation of systems is the first shake-up of the GP IT market we have seen in a quarter of a century, and this shift will help unlock more modern, joined-up care for patients, and help our staff to work better and smarter.
‘It also shows our ongoing commitment to ensuring that the NHS has access to the highest quality digital tools to transform the experience of patients and staff.’
RCGP chair Professor Kamila Hawthorne said that GPs will ‘certainly want assurances’ that the cloud-based storage ‘does not come with risks around data security’.
She said: ‘The current state of IT in general practice, which is often outdated and slow, is a real bug bear for our members.
‘It is both frustrating at a time GP teams are working under intense pressure and hampers the care we’re able to deliver for our patients. Any move towards providing better, more modern IT systems in general practice is good news.
‘Current systems available for GP practices have been criticised for their slowness and responsiveness to issues, and the lack of choice in provider has exacerbated this – so, the introduction of a system that offers greater interoperability is positive and something the College has called for.
‘The safety of our patients’ data is a top priority for GPs, so our members will certainly want assurances that the cloud-based storage does not come with risks around data security – something we expect to already have been considered by NHS England.
‘A further concern for practices will be the considerable workload and disruption associated with changing systems. This is a really big task for even the most tech-savvy of practices, as they will need to ensure no patient information is lost or displaced in the changeover. It’s vital that appropriate support is made available for practices that decide to make a change.
‘We will continue to assess progress in this area with the College’s Health Informatics Group.’
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READERS' COMMENTS [9]
Please note, only GPs are permitted to add comments to articles
System One whispers, through surgeries it weaves,
While EMIS Web its digital threads receives.
For portals bright, where patient records dwell,
And diagnostic scans, a story they foretell.
One NHS Platform GP to rule them all, one NHS Platform GP to find them,
One NHS GP Platform to bring them all, and in the network bind them,
In the servers deep, where the backups lie.
thank you for that, made my day
Why on earth can’t they introduce a NATIONAL IT system across all GP practices and hospitals?
Hi Niall. I ‘ve been asking the same question for 30 years. I remember receiving a CD Rom on the NHS Technology Project back at the beginning of my career. I rang a number and spoke to someone in Leeds. I advised them that all their CDROM talked about Secondary Care. I asked the nice gentleman from ? NHSE about Primary Care but he said that they had not thought about that. A unified system is confounded by corporate tribalism from suppliers, arguments about IP rights, developer egos and a lack of a coherent longer term strategy I suspect.
Might Medicus Health be sold to a USA (or other) corporate in the future? From whom does Medicus buy cloud computing services, Amazon Web Services or Google?
Will patient data be guaranteed forever that it will be private, secure, never financialised, never used for language learning etc?
I’m not sure I’d want a single national system – too dependent then on that individual provider. However, as the pioneer practice here (we were the first to move), one of the big reasons we chose to move is that Medicus uses all the national tools for exchanging data. In practice this means that they don’t blame everyone else when anything goes wrong, and indeed that it generally doesn’t because those tools are national standards which “just work”.
Of course we have all the obvious problems with everyone else wanting to use their own proprietary APIs for which they can charge everyone £££ for basic interoperability, but Medicus have been a total breath of fresh air, and while they’re not a national IT system I wouldn’t want them to be.
They’re different in that they are agnostic about what clinical system you use – if it works with NHS digital standards it will work with them.
Switching from EMIS LV to system 1 was a major factor in my deciding to take early retirement as a GP ten years ago. Managers seemed to like System 1’s marketing techniques but as a clinical system it was unworkable for jobbing GPs like me.
Exactly my thought Niall! That only would worth any anticipated disruption and additional workload all NHS
Palantir that poison pill the DOH is trying to make hospitals swallow to get their claws into NHS data – Watch this space as I predict they will swoop in to try and Buy EMIS.
Since EMIS sold out – it is getting slower and less usable, and its so bad I would welcome swapping to the chaos of a new clinical system – in the hope it is quicker and more usable.