An innovative scheme using mobile technology to identify patients ‘at risk’ of developing CVD by effectively establishing smoking status has recently proved a great success in Hammersmith & Fulham PCT.  The scheme found that the use of iPLATO Patient Care Messaging to request a patient’s smoking status via text message, resulted in significantly higher response rates than other methods of communication previously used, enabling a patient’s medical record to be updated quickly and efficiently.

According to a study made by the British Heart Foundation, the risk of mortality from any cardiovascular disease is 60% higher in smokers compared to non-smokers, making the identification of this ‘at risk’ group a crucial element in the battle against CVD.

From searches made on their GP system, the surgeries sent out a text message asking patients to text back their current smoking status. Patients who received this message were able to text back their status via a reply text that arrived at the surgery as an email (to a pre-defined surgery email address).  The Brook Green Medical Centre, in Hammersmith & Fulham PCT, successfully used the platform and achieved response rates of 49% when requesting smoking status via text message.

Peter Dawson, Practice Manager at Brook Green Medical Centre said, “I found the campaign tool very easy to use. Response rates were much higher than expected and we have since received very positive feedback from patients who thought it a novel and efficient use of technology.”

The potential of this approach is considerable when new Department of Health data collection requirements are taken into account.  The Local Delivery Plan Return (LDPR) is a data collection undertaken by the Department of Health to monitor the progress of SHA’s, PCT’s, and NHS trusts in the achievement against the Local delivery plan ‘trajectory schedules’ and data collected for monitoring purposes in relation to government policy.

As part of the Local Delivery Plan Return (LDPR), each PCT is required to submit the total number of patients on the register aged 16 and over with smoking status recorded in the last 15 months.  The use of the iPLATO Patient Care Messaging to perform this task in GP surgeries in Hammersmith & Fulham PCT and elsewhere has proven to be very successful to support the achievement of this LPDR target.

Miles Freeman, Associate Director of Commissioning (Primary Care) at Hammersmith & Fulham PCT, said, ‘’Having the Patient Care Messaging capability within over 80% of our GP surgeries has enabled effective support of a range of PCT initiatives, including the accurate recording of Smoking Status on a Trust-wide basis and the subsequent improvement in referral to Smoking Cessation support and advice. Cost savings possible with this approach have also proven to be compelling, when compared to the cost of previous methods employed for similar ends.”

Funded centrally by the PCT, the service has been adopted by 85% of Hammersmith & Fulham PCT’s GP surgeries and is being used to address important Public Health concerns on an ongoing basis.

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Notes for Editors:

About Hammersmith and Fulham PCT

Hammersmith and Fulham Primary Care Trust (PCT) is the NHS organisation responsible for providing and commissioning healthcare for people living and working in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham.  Our aim is to improve the health of local residents by providing access to high quality health services and encouraging people to make healthy lifestyle choices (for example stopping smoking, eating a healthy diet and taking regular exercise).

All media enquiries should be directed to the Jan Adamson Primary Care Commissioning Manager on: 0203 313 7218 or at [1] jan.adamson@hf-pct.nhs.uk

[2] Patients of the Bush Doctors and Richford Gate Medical Practice in Hammersmith and Fulham Primary Care Trust will soon receive automated voice messages requesting information to update their medical record. The trial in two local GP practices, enabled by iPLATO, aims to improve the accuracy of core patient data held by GPs. The hope is that patients will like the new system and that it will save doctors time and money. If the trial is a success the PCT plans to roll out the system to 25 other practices using the iPLATO system.

The free service will send an automated voice message to a patient’s landline telephone asking them to confirm if they smoke or not. The automated messaging service clearly states that the call comes from the patient’s own GP surgery and will also specify who the call is for in case the phone is shared between people within the household. Patients are asked during the call to respond to the question via keystroke on their telephone keypad.

Dr. Susan McGoldrick GP at the Bush Doctors said, “We think our population is ready for this automated voice service, as it is a natural extension of the texting service we already offer to people who have their mobile telephone number recorded on the system here at the surgery. In this project we seek to streamline tedious but necessary tasks, such as continuously updating patient records, to free up staff to work with our patients. We know that this method will be more efficient than most other data collection methods, so what we are really looking at is establishing patient acceptance and satisfaction.

Tom Stevenson, spokesperson for the PCT, said, “We are excited about the opportunity to improve communication with our patients through innovative technology. Doctors need to collect information on all their patients’ smoking status every 15 months; but there are plenty of people who won’t see their GP that often. This new system makes it quick and convenient for both doctors and patients, and will hopefully increase the number of people we can offer stop smoking support to.”

This trial is an extension to a series of text messaging services with a similar aim conducted by Hammersmith and Fulham GP surgeries, Hammersmith and Fulham PCT and iPLATO over the last year.

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Notes for Editors:

About Hammersmith and Fulham PCT

Hammersmith and Fulham PCT is the NHS organisation responsible for planning and commissioning all NHS services on behalf of the 171,500 residents of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. There are 30 GP practices across the borough.

Press contact:
Tom Stevenson
020 8846 6572 / 07852 435637

Recent results from a text messaging campaign for calling hypertensive patients in for periodic blood pressure reading ran by the Lea Surgery in City & Hackney tPCT has delivered response rates of 76%.

From searches made on their GP system, the surgery sent out a group text message to selected patients inviting them to call the surgery to make an appointment. Within three weeks of sending the text invitation, 149 out of 197 patients had had their blood pressure checked. These results have highlighted just how effective iPLATO Patient Care Messaging can be for health promotion campaigns.

Having high blood pressure is one of several ‘risk factors’ that can increase your chance of developing heart disease, stroke and other serious conditions. Treatment includes a change in lifestyle risk factors where these can be improved - losing weight if you are overweight, regular physical activity, a healthy diet, cutting back if you drink a lot of alcohol, stopping smoking, and a low salt intake. If needed, medication can lower blood pressure. Periodic monitoring of patients blood pressure is essential for supporting them reducing the risk for serious complications and conditions.

Dr Goel, GP at the Lea Surgery said: “Getting hold of the right patients for periodic reviews at the right time is often cumbersome. The system makes it a lot easier.”

Jonathan Mason, Head of Prescribing and Pharmacy at City & Hackney tPCT, said, ‘’The recent use of the iPLATO system by the Lea Surgery to support their hypertension campaign is another good example of the healthcare initiatives that are currently being positively supported by iPLATO Patient Care Messaging within City & Hackney tPCT.  As the majority of City & Hackney GP surgeries now have the iPLATO capability, we look forward to more success stories to come.”

Funded centrally by the tPCT, the service has been adopted by 41 of City & Hackney tPCT’s GP surgeries and is being used to address important Public Health concerns such as Smoking, Flu, Childhood Immunisations, Breast Screening and Obesity.

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Notes for Editors:

About City and Hackney

City and Hackney Teaching Primary Care Trust is responsible for improving the health and well-being of local people by ensuring that appropriate services are available in the right place and at the right time. The PCT does this by entering into agreements with health care providers, such as hospitals, to provide a wide range of different health services, ensuring that patients have a choice about where they go for treatment. It also directly provides community-based health services such as health visiting, physiotherapy and district nursing, and is responsible for developing primary care services in conjunction with GPs, dentists, opticians and pharmacists. City and Hackney Primary Care Trust was set up on the 1st April 2001 and employs around 560 staff.

Tens of thousands of people in Oldham will now be receiving text messages from their GP.

These will include everything from reminders about GP, jab and breast screening appointments to health messages about quitting smoking.

This new and innovative scheme is rolling out across the borough - with several practices already signed up and ‘running with it’.

Karen Smith, practice manager at St Chad’s Medical Centre, Limeside, said: “People are so busy today it is easy to forget an appointment.  An estimated 82% of the UK adult population own a mobile phone - so this is an ideal way to do our bit to help people manage their busy lives.

“We’ve had such positive feedback from patients and people are actually asking to be signed up.

“We are proud to be one of the first practices in Oldham to sign up for this and welcome any queries or comments from our patients.”

Shauna Dixon, director of clinical leadership at Oldham Primary Care Trust, said: “We are pleased and excited to be offering this service to our patients.  A fantastic benefit of this system is being able to send out messages in a number of languages.

“Not only will this scheme benefit patients - it will also help to save more than £750 million of taxpayers money - which is wasted on missed appointments every year.

“We would like to reassure people that we have strict guidelines in place to ensure the safety of patient’s details.  Patients are able to opt out if they wish by simply telling their GP or any practice staff.”

Text messaging is one of several initiatives that are being rolled out to improve patient’s access to primary care services.  This includes extended opening hours and the ability to book appointments and order repeat prescriptions over the internet - which is already being offered by many practices.

The recent results from the Patient Experience Survey show that overall most people are happy with access to primary care services in Oldham.  However, practices and the PCT are always looking for ways to continually improve.  These new initiatives are in the early stages of life and it is hoped that as more practices adopt the ideas and patients begin to reap the benefits, the satisfaction rate will increase even more.

If you would like to find out more about these services contact your GP practice.

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Pharmacies in London will launch a text messaging service to validate smoking status and invite ‘quitters’ for smoking cessation services in addition to using the system for ‘follow-up’ over the next year. The adoption of the Patient Care Messaging service, provided by iPLATO, has been driven by the successful use of the system for similar campaigns in GP surgeries across 34 PCTs. 

The pharmacies using iPLATO’s Patient Care Messaging for Pharmacies service, will receive support via best practice techniques for launching the text messaging service, enabling them to fulfil their growing role in Public Health.

A representative from one of the pharmacies said, “We are excited about the opportunity to improve engagement with our patients through innovative technology. For any broad patient communication solution we are always concerned with privacy and data protection. The PCT has developed guidelines to ensure patient safety that we adhere to. According to these guidelines, patients can opt out of the service at any time by simply telling their pharmacist or any staff. We would encourage all customers to hand in their mobile number so that we can reach them with this new service.”

“We are delighted to support pharmacies delivering public health services” said Tobias Alpsten, Managing Director for iPLATO. “Through our technology and knowledge we can let pharmacies benefit from our experience of overseeing dozens of mobile smoking cessation campaigns. This will enable them to better serve their communities and improve their businesses. In the first stage we aim to enable targeted smoking cessation campaigns. In the future, we expect to grow the platform to automated services such as repeat prescription and medication reminders. We hope to create revenue share based partnerships with pharmacy management systems to achieve this goal.”

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Newham residents are to benefit from receiving GP appointment reminders and health information on their mobiles phones via text message. Newham Primary Care Trust (PCT) has funded 47 GP surgeries to launch and operate iPLATO Patient Care Messaging. This new service has already been rolled out in some GP practices in Newham.

The text messaging service aims to reduce non-attendance to booked GP appointments by giving people timely reminders. This service will also be used for informing patients about critical NHS services such as cancer screening and immunisation.

According to Imperial College researchers, non-attendance to appointments cost the NHS - and the tax payer - more than £750 million per year. The iPLATO system has proven to reduce non-attendance at booked appointments in General Practice by 26% to 40%. In addition to reaping financial benefits through increased efficiency, the PCT hopes to establish an effective communication channel for health information.

With an estimated 82% of the UK adult population owning a mobile phone, participating surgeries will be able to reach a significant number of their patients through this scheme. Text messages are free to receive for the patient. If patients choose to respond, they will be charged standard operator rates depending on their individual contract. To achieve optimal uptake of and benefits from this service surgeries encourage their patients to give their mobile phone numbers and make sure that their details are updated.

Dr Rafiq of Boleyn Road Medical Practice said: “Mobile phones are used by most of our patients and so text messaging is an effective way to communicate with them. This service has the potential to significantly increase the number of patients attending clinics as well as saving on surgery administration costs. We are encouraging our patients to give their mobile number at reception to take advantage of this new service.”

Dr Frances Haste, Acting Director of Public Health at Newham PCT and London Borough of Newham said: “We are excited about the opportunity to improve communication with our patients through innovative technology. The text messaging service will help to remind patients about their GP appointments and help promote health improvement initiatives. Newham PCT has developed guidelines to ensure that patient data is protected. Patients can opt out of the service at any time by simply telling their GP or any practice staff.”

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Notes for Editors:

About Newham PCT

Newham Primary Care Trust (PCT) directly provides a range of primary and community health services, purchases healthcare on behalf of the local population and is responsible for developing GP, pharmacy, dentistry and optometry services. We directly employ around 1,300 staff based across 23 sites.

Contact for Newham Primary Care Trust:
Ian Thorpe, 020 8586 6329

About iPLATO

iPLATO is a privately owned limited company founded in London in the autumn of 1999. In 2003, iPLATO was awarded a SMART Feasibility Grant by the Department of Trade & Industry to study the feasibility for national implementation of a system to remind outpatients about scheduled appointments using text messaging technology.

Since completing the study, the company has invested substantial resources towards overcoming the barriers to entry of the healthcare market and now provides successful healthcare solutions to NHS organisations throughout the United Kingdom - building a promising business around its flagship service ‘Patient Care Messaging’.

The European Venture Contest, organised by the European Commission, recognised iPLATO as one of the top ten early stage technology ventures ready to “reshape their industry and to conquer the global market” and featured on the Red Herring Europe Top 200 of companies to watch in 2006. iPLATO began 2008 with extensive (PCT funded) roll out of Patient Care Messaging to GP surgeries across 10 Primary Care Trusts.

Press contact:

Julia Hanley
020 3178 4676
[3] julia.hanley@iplato.net
One Lyric Sqaure, W6 0NB, London, United Kingdom
[4] www.iplato.net
Pictures available on request

[5] Recent GP led text messaging campaigns have highlighted the effectiveness of iPLATO Patient Care Messaging for the identification of smokers in Barking & Dagenham PCT. Results from the first 10 surgeries to run the campaign have revealed average patient response rates of 46% - a major improvement when compared with alternative methods of collecting the same information.The Smoking Status ‘update’ campaigns were run with the aim of reducing Smoking prevalence in a patient population, by effectively establishing smoking status to subsequently refer ‘quitters’ to Smoking Cessation support and advice From searches made on their GP system, the surgeries sent out a text message asking patients to text back their current smoking status. Patients who received this message were able to text back their status via a reply text that arrived at the surgery as an email (to a pre-defined surgery email address).

Jim McManus, Associate Director of Health Improvement at Barking & Dagenham PCT, said, “The iPLATO platform is proving to be an invaluable tool for the support of health promotion initiatives. Without the effective identification and engagement of at risk groups in the community, it can be difficult to direct relevant services successfully. These recent results have shown how effective Patient Care Messaging has been at supporting GP led Health Promotion campaigns. Compared to other potential approaches these campaigns have also proven to be cost effective.”

Funded centrally by the PCT, the service has been adopted by over 80% of Barking & Dagenham GPs and is being used to address important Public Health concerns such as Smoking, Flu, Childhood Immunisations and Obesity. The system works by integrating with the GPs’ clinical system where patient records are stored. Surgeries can use the clinical information they hold to target specific patients for health promotion campaigns and send groups of patients text message invitations to clinics.

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Notes for Editors:

About Barking & Dagenham PCT

Barking and Dagenham Primary Care Trust is responsible for improving the health and well-being of local people by ensuring that appropriate services are available in the right place and at the right time. The PCT does this by entering into agreements with health care providers, such as hospitals, to provide a wide range of different health services, ensuring that patients have a choice about where they go for treatment. It also directly provides community-based health services such as health visiting, physiotherapy and district nursing, and is responsible for developing primary care services in conjunction with GPs, dentists, opticians and pharmacists. Barking and Dagenham Primary Care Trust was set up in April 2001 and employs around 640 staff. For more information, visit [6] www.bdpct.nhs.uk.

Press contact for Barking & Dagenham Primary Care Trust:
Rowan Taylor, Head of Communications, 020 8532 6220, [7] rowan.taylor@bdpct.nhs.uk

[2] GP Practices in Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale are piloting a new text messaging service to help reduce the number of missed appointments.

Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale Primary Care Trust (HMRPCT) is investing £25,000 to fund the initiative, known as iPLATO Patient Care Messaging. This service will enable practices to send a reminder text message to patients who have supplied their mobile phone number 24 hours in advance. If a patient is unable to attend the appointment, they can notify the practice by simply replying to the message.

GP practices will also be able to use the service to prompt patients to attend check up appointments.

Vivienne Ben-David, head of primary care at HMRPCT, said: “It’s really important that patients attend their GP appointments or cancel them if they cannot attend. The Patient Care Messaging service will help us to reduce the number of wasted appointments and pass cancellations on to patients who really need them. Of course we will be evaluating the effectiveness of the service during its pilot stage and will be welcoming feedback from patients.”

The following practices are taking part in the pilot:

Heywood
Longford Street, Heady Hill Surgery, York House Surgery

Middleton
Windermere Surgery, 133 Bowness Rd, Junction Surgery

Rochdale
Drake Street Surgery, Ashworth Street Surgery, Village Medical Centre, East Street Surgery, Healey Surgery, Baillie Street- Dr Babar & partners, Vicars Drive Surgery, Triple H Practice, Lowerplace- Dr Syed’s, Milnrow Village Practice, Tweedale Street Surgery, Dr Ghafoor- Baillie Street Surgery

Appoints Chief Medical Officer from Imperial College to accelerate development of evidence based mobile health services

Mobile health specialist, iPLATO, announced today that it has rolled out Patient Care Messaging extensively across 10 Primary Care Trusts in the first quarter of 2008. The roll-outs will allow an additional 2 million people across England to benefit from improved access and mobile health promotion from their GPs. Confirming the national appeal of the platform the majority of the PCTs to launch iPLATO Patient Care Messaging are located outside of London.

Underlining an evolution in market perception, only half of these launches primarily targeted DNA rate reduction - with the remaining PCTs adopting the platform for the support of Public Health areas such as Smoking Cessation, Obesity, Screening and Immunisation.

“Our Primary Care Trust has funded iPLATO Patient Care Messaging as a strategic capability for 42 surgeries, to enable broad engagement with our population”, says Lesley Mountford, Director of Public Health at City and Hackney PCT. “We are looking at text appointment reminders as a means to establish a ‘mobile relationship’ with patients, but we emphasise the opportunity to run mobile health promotion campaigns. This year we plan to use the texting in breast screening and smoking cessation. We are really pleased that the vast majority of the surgeries chose to take part. As a result more than 90% of our population will now benefit from mobile services.”

A crucial aspect to fuel this growth has been iPLATO’s evidence based offerings, which have allowed its NHS partners to not only identify and engage with at risk patients through mobile health promotion, but also to confirm the impact of these campaigns as well. The company has appointed Dr Josip Car as Chief Medical Officer to accelerate the development of the company’s service offering, clearly emphasising its commitment to deliver evidence and outcomes.

“I am delighted to join a young and dynamic team”, says Dr Josip Car, General Practitioner and Director of e-Health at Imperial College. “With a rapidly growing patient base and platform integrated to the current healthcare delivery system, I feel that there is a magnificent opportunity to expand the offering and really improve the health of patients and populations. The three main areas of offerings we are looking at are access improvement / practice efficiency, health promotion and support to patients with long term conditions. The mobile channel has a huge role to play in all three areas.”

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Notes for Editors:

Press contact for City and Hackney Teaching Primary Care Trust:

Pamela Froggatt
External Communications and Campaigns Manager
City and Hackney Teaching Primary Care Trust
020 7683 4265

[2] A highly innovative scheme to use mobile technology to obtain a patients weight has proved a great success in Hammersmith & Fulham PCT.

The recent scheme found that by using iPLATO Patient Care Messaging to request a patient’s weight via text message, the patient’s medical record could be updated quickly and efficiently with a current body mass index (BMI) reading. This finding ties straight into the government’s £372m ‘Healthy Living’ strategy, which aims at cutting levels of obesity in England.

After sharp increases in the last decade, nearly a quarter of adults and nearly a fifth of children are now currently obese in the UK. By using their GP Administration System (EMIS, INPS Vision, etc.), linked to Patient Care Messaging, GP surgeries can support ‘obesity related’ mobile health promotion campaigns via the sending of personalised text messages. In this case: ‘What is your weight?’

This approach has proved considerably more effective than traditional ways of obtaining this information. The Bush Doctors Surgery, in Hammersmith & Fulham PCT, successfully tested the platform and achieved response rates of 29%.

Mandy Norton, Practice Manager at The Bush Doctors said, ”Text messaging has been a massive help, enabling us to gather a patient’s weight quickly in order to calculate their BMI. Of course we weigh people at the surgery, but this method allows us to quickly and very cost effectively update the records of people who may not need our services very often. With mobile being the communication method of choice for our very varied patient base and with obesity levels being where they are, we feel that this is a perfect complement to our current service ”.

Hammersmith & Fulham PCT’s Local Enhanced Service for Cardio-Vascular Disease requires a recent BMI reading for 40% of the population. The campaign took less than one hour of a Practice Manager’s time, including searching for patients with old or no BMI reading, sending the text message, receiving replies and entering the results back onto the patient record. The campaign will now be replicated across the Borough, touching the lives of almost 100,000 people.

iPLATO’s Managing Director, Tobias Alpsten said, “Over the years we have seen surgeries use our text messaging system to develop health promotion campaigns. Being able to obtain a patient’s current BMI reading in a fast and accurate way could play a significant role in the fight to reduce obesity levels nationwide.’

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Notes for Editors:

About Hammersmith and Fulham PCT

Hammersmith and Fulham Primary Care Trust (PCT) is the NHS organisation responsible for providing and commissioning healthcare for people living and working in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. Our aim is to improve the health of local residents by providing access to high quality health services and encouraging people to make healthy lifestyle choices (for example stopping smoking, eating a healthy diet and taking regular exercise).

All media enquiries should be directed to the Press and Communications department on
Tel: 020 8846 6572 fax: 020 8846 7961 [8] tom.stevenson@hf-pct.nhs.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.