EMIS GP System of Choice (GPSoC)

Tender description

The expenditure is required to ensure the continued provision of GP services, to the population of NI by 171 GP practices that use the EMIS Web solution. Work is underway to ensure a new business case and contract will be in place by 31st March 2023. Without the expenditure, which has already been approved via the GMS ICT infrastructure Business Case 2018-2023, EMIS Web GP practices would be unable to use their GP clinical system nor would they receive support and associated services from EMIS for their infrastructure, beyond 31/3/2022. Given the dependency on IT in General Practice, stopping these services would very significantly impact on the ability of the 171 EMIS GP practices to provide GMS services. Practices would be unable to access patient histories or record consultations against an electronic patient record. They would also be unable to interface electronically with other HSC systems - E.g. lab results, radiology reports, registration links, Emergency Care Summary, Key Information Summary, Electronic Document Transfer, GPIP etc. - so reintroducing delay and inaccuracy in patient care. Lot 1: key element identified in the strategy was the alignment with England's GMS IT procurement, known as GP IT Futures, and the use of its proposed GP IT Futures Catalogue and GP IT Futures Framework. The use of the IT Futures Catalogue brings huge benefits to NI: • items on the catalogue, including both systems and services, can only be there if they have been rigorously tested and accepted. NHS Digital provide the testing for the catalogue. Without this, NI would have to find appropriate experts, both clinical and technical, to continuously carry out the testing of new or amended items. This would significantly increase risk, cost and timescales for every new item to be procured by NI.