Credit: Andrew Milligan/PA Wire/PA Images

Late last year NHS Digital signed a £2m deal with the UK’s largest provider of general practice IT systems to cover the transfer of positive coronavirus test results directly into patients’ primary care records.

Newly published procurement information shows that EMIS Health was awarded a contract that took effect on 11 December, and runs until 2 February 2022. 

The engagement requires the IT firm to “message positive Covid results from labs directly to GP patient records”. 

Related content

• Test and Trace buys £1.3m software tool to analyse PCR results data
• Test and Trace spends £6.7m on Microsoft licences
• NHS Covid app: venue check-ins fall off a cliff as contact alerts continue to decline

The procurement notice indicates that the contract was expected to cover “1.5 million transactions”. This requirement has already likely been far exceeded, with the UK recording more than 4.8 million coronavirus cases in the time the contract has been effect, and with more than five months left to run on the deal.

This might explain why the £2m value of the awarded contract is significantly higher than the original estimate of £300,000.

EMIS is responsible for running the IT systems of about 57% of GPs in this country, covering a total of almost 35 million individual patient records. It is comfortably the largest provider of clinical platforms for general practice, with a market share nearly double that of its nearest rival TPP.