One of the UK’s primary suppliers of health software solutions, EMIS, has now become a PRSB partner.

Operating for more than 35 years, the products offered by EMIS are developed with a strong clinical focus to support and deliver connected healthcare, and EMIS Web is present in almost 60% of GP surgeries across the UK. Their products and solutions are primarily suited to GP practices, community pharmacies and emergency departments, as well as software associated with COVID-19 and flu vaccination programmes.

“Clinical safety is our number one priority,” explains Edward Bellamy, Chief Commercial Officer at EMIS. “Our systems must be scalable, secure and developed with high information governance standards in order for us to supply high quality, clinically safe point of care solutions.

“Our aim is to deliver excellence to clinicians. This might incorporate a focus on reducing workload and creating safe and effective environments, or aiding the ingest or digest of information that is clinically relevant and helpful for patient care.”

By joining the scheme, EMIS hopes to get early insights into policy changes and system requirements, and to add value by contributing their knowledge to the continual improvement of standards.

“We believe in making a genuine contribution to PRSB standards. In response to nationwide care-based problem statements, the NHS will commission specifications which are distributed to suppliers to embed within their systems. We sometimes find however, that our clinicians interpret the challenge from an alternative perspective, and so that specification may need a little optimisation for some environments. For us, it makes sense to become involved in the setting of specifications and standards much earlier in the process to get the best possible outcome for professionals and patients.”

EMIS appreciates the need for its systems to interoperate with the solutions of other providers, considering it critical, not only for commercial prosperity, but more importantly to the success of their customers and their end users.

“We pride ourselves on being one of the most, if not the most, interoperable supplier servicing the UK health and care system. The clinical workflow cannot survive in a single system, so for us, it’s ‘interoperate or lose the clinician.’ This is all about ensuring the clinical workflow is operating at optimal capacity to provide the patient with the best care possible.”

“Standards are essential for the scaling of solutions. If everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet, it’s much easier to iterate – especially if that’s happening across both health and social care. As EMIS has grown over its 35 years we’ve seen the evolution of the standards-oriented health tech sector, meaning the pace of change can be faster and interoperability is more straightforward. Scaling across multiple care settings can be achieved much more successfully.”

Lorraine Foley, PRSB CEO, said: “It’s great to learn that EMIS recognises the value of PRSB standards in delivering a truly interoperable health and care system. I offer a warm welcome to Edward and his colleagues, and am eager to collaborate with them on developing, applying and improving PRSB standards to further improve the delivery of care.”