EMIS and iPLATO mobile health services reach 1 million patients in the UK

EMIS accredited partner iPLATO Healthcare revealed that coverage of their Patient Care Messaging services has risen to over one million GP patients. Facilitating this growth has been the ground breaking platform, securely linked to EMIS, coupled with a unique service offering and expertise, which allows its NHS partners to dramatically improve patient access and deliver powerful health promotion campaigns. With continued focus on delivering improved health of patient and populations in partnership with primary care organisations, iPLATO expects reaching 10 million patients within the next 24 months.

Sean Riddell, Healthcare Managing Director of EMIS said: “We are delighted to celebrate the one million patient milestone for this innovative text messaging service, which is delivering very real benefits to both EMIS practices and patients.”

“For example, within Lewisham PCT in South London it has been credited with reducing missed appointments by 27 per cent over the last year. If you projected these figures nationally, the service could potentially save more than 2.7 million GP appointments a year.”

He added: “This is a great example of how interoperability between different systems can extend services for GPs and help to improve patient care.”

Tobias Alpsten, Managing Director of iPLATO, said: “EMIS has been instrumental in enabling us to reach our first million patients and delivering such great results. However, this is only a step on the way. EMIS systems hold 39 million patient records and there are more than 69 million mobile handsets in the UK today, each owned by a person for whom health is important. It is our view that there is a lot of room for growth. To address this opportunity we actively seek partners with specific clinical skills to add to our overall service offering. We owe our healthcare provider partners and patients best-of-breed mobile health services. We expect many of these new and exciting services to be delivered in partnership with universities, hospitals, clinical experts and other innovation companies across the world”.

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Notes for Editors:

About EMIS

EMIS is the UK’s leading supplier of IT systems to GPs, providing the software that holds the medical records for 39 million NHS patients nationwide. Around 56 per cent of GPs in the UK currently use EMIS software.

The company has a 20-year history of innovation within the UK primary care market. Founded by GPs Dr Peter Sowerby and Dr David Stables, its guiding ethos is that the software used by GP surgeries should be “written by doctors, for doctors”.

EMIS is responsible for a number of innovatory products and services for GPs and patients, including EMIS Access - the only online appointment bookings service currently available within the NHS; a groundbreaking electronic prescription management service and a shared data system that enables secure GP-to-GP exchange of patient records.

About iPLATO

iPLATO is a privately owned innovation company head quartered in London. Over the last four years the company has invested substantial resources towards overcoming the barriers to entry of the United Kingdom healthcare market and building a mobile healthcare business. In 2003, iPLATO was awarded a SMART Feasibility Grant by the Department of Trade & Industry to study the feasibility of a national implementation of a system to remind outpatients about scheduled appointments using text messaging technology.

Since completing the study, the company has built a promising business around its flagship service - Patient Care Messaging. The European Venture Contest, organised by the European Commission, recently recognised iPLATO as one of the top ten early stage technology ventures ready to “reshape their industry and to conquer the global market”. The company featured on the Red Herring Europe Top 200 of companies to watch in 2006.

Press Contact:

Julia Hanley
020 3178 4676
julia.hanley@iplato.net
One Lyric Square,  W6 0NB, London, United Kingdom
www.iplato.net