EMIS Group has revealed plans today for what the company terms a ‘next generation of connected healthcare technology’ platform.
EMIS has announced EMIS-X, a new cloud-based solution that seamlessly links different healthcare teams and systems. It will be an upgrade to EMIS Web, the clinical system used by 56% of GPs, to meet the current and future needs of its customers and end users including patients, clinicians and the NHS.
Built on a cloud platform, EMIS-X is a new ecosystem that fully supports interoperability standards but goes significantly further by allowing applications to selectively share live data through cross application working.
Its built on a modular design to enable EMIS Web users to transition seamlessly to the new platform. The system will be available for clinicians working anywhere and they will be able to see a consolidated view of key medical information across healthcare organisations using EMIS-X, partner products, other NHS systems and patients themselves, giving unique insight into patients’ medical history.
EMIS Group CEO Andy Thorburn said: “From the start, EMIS Group has led the way in interoperability and we have been working closely with clinicians and other customers during 2018 to develop EMIS-X. We believe it is the blueprint for the future of connected healthcare in the UK. EMIS-X is massively scalable and provides unprecedented levels of protection for patient data, including strong encryption of sensitive data.”
“It is designed as a portfolio of foundation services upon which clinical applications can be developed, both by EMIS Group and partners. This will also allow new solution providers with interesting technologies such as artificial intelligence to overcome the traditional barriers to market entry, leveraging the interoperability at the heart of our new architecture.”
“We believe EMIS-X will help to hugely improve efficiency and patient safety, while providing dramatic cost savings to the NHS. We see millions of hours currently spent by patients and staff in repeating information at each stage of the patient’s healthcare journey being eliminated and the management of medicines in pharmacy being revolutionised by better insight and more efficient services delivered through EMIS-X.”
Among the new features for EMIS-X is federated appointments, which for example will enable clinicians to instantly search providers of an investigation service such as an MRI scan, to immediately book the earliest appointment nearest to the patient’s location, giving patients the details by text, email or print-out.
Other developments announced include:
- Intelligent Consulting – voice recognition technology currently being tested in EMIS-X and using artificial intelligence to make consultations more patient-friendly and save clinicians time. It will automatically interpret patient-clinician conversations and turn them into medical codes that present relevant data or launch and complete clinical decision tools. Doctors will be able to concentrate fully on the patient, rather than retrieving information from the computer.
- GP video consultations via Patient Access. Patients will be able to book video appointments, as an alternative to in-person surgery visits, reducing the need to travel and enabling remote patient management for a significant proportion of conditions.
- EMIS Health analytics – a powerful healthcare intelligence suite, giving users insight across a breadth of clinical and administrative indicators, including appointments capacity, and prescribing and referral patterns. It enables ‘at-a-glance’ overviews of performance, enabling commissioners to improve the quality and efficiency of healthcare.
