NHS IT project rolled out nationwide

The national rollout of the NHS patient electronic health record transfer system GP2GP has begun.

GP2GP is one of the projects within the wider NHS IT programme and allows patient health records to be transferred between GP practices electronically, instead of using the traditional paper-based system.

The national rollout of version 1.1 of GP2GP will initially be for doctors' practices with two clinical systems - EMIS LV 5.2 and INPS Vision 3 - with further suppliers due to join the rollout at a later date.

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This national rollout follows a number of trials and an earlier rollout of version 1.0 of GP2GP to more than 650 practices which enabled patient records to be transferred between the same clinical systems.

More than 10,000 transfers of electronic health records have now taken place using GP2GP.

Version 1.1 allows patient records to be transferred across different clinical systems - such as from EMIS LV 5.2 to INPS Vision 3.

The next steps for the GP2GP project include upgrading practices which are currently using the earlier version of GP2GP and beginning the rollout of the software to those Primary Care Trusts and practices that have not yet been involved in the project.

Dr Paul Robinson, co-chairman of the Joint GP IT Committee, said GP2GP ensures doctors have patients' medical histories available in advance of their first consultation and delivers "major time savings for administrative staff".