EMIS Web First of type testing begins

EMIS Web has begun first of type testing at GP practices in England, healthcare IT supplier EMIS has announced.

The company said first of type testing for its next generation system, originally due in April, began on 11 May at its first GP practice and has now been deployed to four GP sites. More practices are expected to join first of type testing during the summer and EMIS hopes to get full roll-out approval in the autumn.

First of type testing is the final stage in the accreditation of EMIS Web 3.0.1 and should be followed by full roll-out approval, dependant on the success of the first of type deployments.

According to planned dates for NHS Connecting for Health releases published on the CfH website, first of type testing of EMIS Web is covering GP system requirements, the Personal Demographics Service, Choose and Book and the Electronic Prescription Service with GP2GP configurations to follow.

This will then converge back in to the issue of full roll-out approval for the full scope of release 3.0.

Sean Riddell, managing director of EMIS, said: “We are delighted that EMIS Web has been deployed in a live GP environment. This is a significant milestone.”

A Department of Health spokesperson told EHI Primary Care that it could confirm that first of type testing had begun “in a handful of practices.”

EMIS has also announced that it is offering a “familiarisation service” to enable 800 additional practices to begin streaming their data into EMIS Web.

The company said the service is designed to smooth the process of migration to the system and to reduce training requirements for practices by allowing them to run EMIS Web alongside their existing EMIS system.

The service enables read-only access to live data and EMIS said more than 1700 GP practices were already using EMIS Web on a similar basis.

Riddell said there had been strong demand for the familiarisation service. He added: “The extension of this service to an additional 800 practices marks another important step towards the full implementation of EMIS Web.”