The system enables organisations such as PCTs and GP consortia to run instant searches on the data held by the practices in their locality, with their prior consent. It’s a fast, efficient way to see up to the minute health information that can be used in a number of ways to benefit patient care, for example:

• improving call and recall such as for childhood vaccinations – for NHS Tower Hamlets this has improved uptake of MMR second dose from just over 80 per cent to almost 95 per cent
• ensuring accuracy and consistency of medical records – e.g. to ensure a diabetic read code is present if a diagnosis of diabetes has been recorded
• presenting data on patient care and the quality of services to general practice
• to help improve services and monitor patient care to assess initiatives – for example a recall programme can be evaluated as quickly as one month after implementation; if successful it can be rolled out to other practices

• to save time by collecting audit data remotely
• to assess potential cardiovascular risk when used in combination with QRisk – the cardiovascular risk score developed by the University of Nottingham in partnership with EMIS
• when combined with Qute, secondary care information can be searched upon too, for example to find diabetic patients who have visited secondary care.

The entire process saves time – because data is collected electronically it is available immediately, without relying on visits to practices to collect information.