Sharing Vital Patient Information

EMIS is an IT system for GPs to hold information about their patients’ care. It is currently being used in Somerset, holding records for more than 540,000 patients.
The SW AHSN gave project support to Somerset Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), to work with GPs, NHS trusts and the local authority to trial software, so that clinicians in urgent and emergency care, out-of-hours and NHS 111 services could read patient records. This allows them to gain rapid access to crucial medical information about acutely ill patients, speeding up and improving their care.
The licences were funded by Somerset CCG as part of their Somerset Integrated Digital electronic Record (SIDeR) programme. Over 4,500 individual records have been viewed since the system launched in October 2016. EMIS will now be rolled out to all clinical services and NHS providers in Somerset.

‘Every time I have accessed EMIS, it has saved me a phone call and saved the GP receptionists from faxing a patient’s medical summary to me. I used to have to wait 15-20 minutes for them to arrive sometimes. Now I can access them in less than a minute.’ –  Accident and emergency practitioner

‘A lady, who was being seen in Cardiac Investigations, was noted to have a facial weakness and was advised to come to ED. When assessed, she mentioned that this was a long-standing problem and she was awaiting an outpatient appointment. Looking at the correspondence on EMIS gave me reassurance that this issue was being dealt with, so she could be rapidly and safely discharged.’ – Emergency department nurse practitioner

‘A patient needed trauma surgery and had a heart murmur. They couldn’t recall the details but said they’d had investigations in the past. The patient gave me permission to access their GP record, which contained the results of an echocardiogram. Without this information, I may have had to delay the urgent surgery to wait for an echo.’ – Consultant anaesthetist