Practice Management Systems Review

Patients First have announced the release of the full NIHI report of the PMS review. (5th June 2012)

Initial (High Five) set of requirements reviewed:

•     Structured data within the PMS

        Use of defined code-sets that are common across the sector (e.g. LOINC for Lab coding)

•     Published (standards based) APIs (application programming interface)

        The ability to share structured information across different systems

•     Support for interoperability standards, with e-Discharge, e-Referral e-Community Prescribing as the priorities

        Supporting the structured flow of information between secondary and primary care

•     Information security, access and privacy

        How information is protected and access to and updates of information are controlled and recorded.

•     Usability – with an initial focus on “alert fatigue”

        How alerts are presented to PMS users based on their role
        Ability for the user to easily differentiate between high priority clinical alerts and lower priority and non-clinical alerts

Star Ratings

There are two ratings for four of the product/focus areas. The first line of stars relates to the views of the functional panel, the second line reflects the ratings of the technical panel.

Note 1:
As Medtech declined the opportunity to respond to the RFI, the report relating to Medtech is based upon knowledge of Medtech PMS obtained through experience of its use and through inspection of its user interface. In compiling this report, the panel did not have access to technical descriptions of the Medtech system, architecture, internal workings or its interfaces.
Throughout the report, statements expressed represent the conclusions reached by observation of the Medtech user interface, limited information provided in documentation (e.g. help files) and the company website, and by deduction. It is therefore possible some statements may be factually incorrect.
A copy of the draft detailed report was provided to Medtech and the company was given an opportunity to respond. Feedback from Medtech has been factored into the report and corresponding star rating.

Note 2:
as of March 2012, the project has been advised that a fundamental security issue assessed at the time of the review has now been addressed as part of Medtech’s Version 20 now in general release.
This matrix provides a high level view of the assessment panel. It is recommended that any person or organisation interested in understanding how ratings were determined, should review the full report.
Although this review is intended to provide guidance to those selecting PMS systems and to provide suppliers with guidance in terms of their future development strategies and areas for quality improvement, it is stressed that many other dimensions relating to these are currently outside the scope of this report and should be taken into account.
It should be noted that this is a point-in-time review.
Although the Patients First Programme will attempt to maintain the currency of these assessments, it cannot guarantee its accuracy in the future