Interoperability at the heart of our solutions

Primary healthcare software has been at the centre of innovation and choice in health service IT development in the UK. There are two main reasons for its success. Firstly a genuine marketplace exists – GPs demand tailored IT solutions. And secondly, the companies providing those GPs with IT solutions have, on the whole, accepted that their products need to be interoperable. In both these areas EMIS has been at the forefront of development.

We believe that our innovative technology delivers solutions that boost practice efficiency and ultimately help improve patient care. But no single company can do everything, which is why we have worked so hard to ensure that the products we make work with the ones that we don’t make.

Several years ago we set up the EMIS partner programme. Third party suppliers who sign up to the programme – many of whom will be demonstrating their products at HC2007 – are committed to interoperability and shared standards.

All partners use the common interoperability standards. This means all the products in the programme – which is continually being expanded – can work together seamlessly.

EMIS is committed to full interoperability with Connecting for Health’s aims and initiatives – from GP2GP to Choose and Book. We work hard to ensure data can be easily exchanged with clinical systems other than EMIS to facilitate the lifelong patient record.

EMIS Web

Interoperability is also at the heart of our latest technological breakthrough – EMIS Web. The next generation of e-healthcare system for primary care, EMIS Web promises fast, online access to patients' records for everyone in the healthcare team. It has been designed with interoperability at its heart, fully utilising the latest Microsoft.NET technologies. Web services allows for deep embedding of a full range of third party healthcare IT suppliers to offer different products and services.

All this means that GP surgeries can draw on a rich resource of IT support, delivered by a range of companies each with their own areas of expertise. With EMIS leading the way, the future of primary care computing looks bright. Interoperability will mean more innovation, the continuing development of the electronic health care record, improved practice efficiencies and better patient care.