Medicus set to shake-up GP IT market

NHS England has approved Medicus Health’s clinical system for use by GP practices across England. This represents the first new supplier to be assured through the Tech Innovation Framework (TIF), which was introduced to deliver a new set of assured cloud-based products into the GP marketplace. 

Launched in 2022 (see NHS Digital launches Tech Innovation Framework), the TIF is part of the NHS Digital Care Services (DCS) catalogue (see NHS England launches Digital Care Services PIN). It is intended to increase competition, enhance innovation and drive greater choice in a market that has been dominated by EMIS Health (now part of UnitedHealth) and TPP for over 25 years. The TIF sought to identify suppliers that could provide an electronic health record (EHR) platform capable of providing at least the following six functions: 1) patient information maintenance; 2) appointments management; 3) recording consultations; 4) prescribing; 5) referral management; and 6) resource management.

London-based Medicus, which was founded in 2019, is now looking to shake up the market. Its solution is live in four early-adopting sites, serving over 42,000 patients in total, but is now available to all GP practices across the country. Through the TIF, all new products are fully compliant with information governance, clinical safety, and data protection, and integrate with NHS infrastructure. 

The Medicus system utilises FHIR-based APIs to support the integration of primary care with other settings, including care homes and vaccination centres. FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) is an international standard for exchanging information between systems, developed by Health Level 7 (HL7). The company currently has 24 integrations across the health system fully assured for live roll-out and others in development. 

It is expected that more core GP IT systems that meet the standards of the TIF will become available by April 2026. 

Increasing the number of core suppliers to the GP market should drive much-needed innovation and service improvements. However, encouraging GPs to implement new core solutions will remain challenging. As demonstrated by the earlier GP IT Futures reform, practices already struggling with capacity constraints are understandably reluctant to accept the disruption that comes with adopting new systems.

Posted by: Dale Peters at 10:08

Tags: nhs   software   health   innovation   healthcare   primary+care