What does the Military Contract mean for SystmOne and the NHS!

You may have seen that TPP have won the bid for the new military medical record (CORISONE). Now, having served in the Army for 11 years and being a SystmOne nerd, this got me VERY excited.  

So, here are my thoughts on why this could be a big deal for all of the NHS if they pull off the following things! 

Putting it in context: 

The military medical record (DMICP) is currently an EMIS based system. It is not ‘just’ General Practice notes, it performs a whole host of roles and responsibilities across the three services. The military medical record has been designed in a way to allow military personnel to travel around the county (and world!) without too much issue. There is though, the issue with what this looks like with changing it.  

Internet access 

I would love to know how they tackle this one! DMICP allowed you to not connect to the internet. So you could have a small, local ‘medical centre’ with a set list of patients (service personnel) on the system. It could be as big or as little as you wanted for a whole range of reasons. The smallest of exercises, range packages, training may only require a medic and a laptop, up until a full deployment where you may be creating and manning a full medical record.  

The issue with SystmOne is that without an internet access it doesn’t like it! Now, I am sure with our district nursing colleagues who will often take a laptop around, there will be a workable solution. I know from working in my own warm office, internet wired in and pretty much guaranteed that there aren’t too many issues! 

But the military isn’t that certain! The best plan in the world will fail and so I would love to see whether the robustness is built in to allow this. This in turn could be added into our own practice one so there isn’t a mad panic when the internet goes down! 

The front line 

Now this is the one I am REALLY excited about. I want you to imagine this:  

A soldier who is shot in the leg, they are bleeding out and the medic gets to them. They apply a tourniquet and the bleeding stops, they get morphine whilst the Company comes alive to get them extracted.  

The ambulance picks up them up and observations are done. They are recorded electronically and updated to the patient’s records. As they move along the medical chain the electronic record is updated in real time. The hospital is a 30 minute drive away and in real time the surgical team is being communicated the blood pressure, pulse, when the Transenamic acid has been administered.  

As the surgery proceeds, the information is communicated back real time to Queen Elizabeth in Birgmingham to update the receiving team. The RAF retrieval team has access to all of the records, updates, to allow transfer back to the UK seamless.  

Ok, far fetched I know! BUT this ability to transfer of care and data would be a real advantage to maximise patient care and could TPP do it? The benefit that TPP have as well is the dabbling already into AI could mean that large amounts of data that is provided could be a real benefit to the any future predictive modules to see what could happen! If they move into this area, could that then be a great benefit for our NHS ambulance service? In our area the majority of primary care providers are on SystmOne and so wouldn’t it be a real advantage to have our ambulance crews with access to the record in real time. I can just dream… 

It’s not just GPs…. 

So the military system I would expect to take over all of the responsibilities. This includes dental health care, physiotherapy, occupational medicine. I have no doubt being exposed to different modules within SystmOne that this is a real possibility to have these ‘bolt ons’ that can talk to each other. I just think it is fascinating that could SystmOne then push into a dental space (I apologise if they already are!).  

Anyway, good luck TPP. It would be great to see what happens with this in the future and then whether this has a positive impact to the NHS! 

Disclaimer – I am not employed by either TPP or the Military.  

Dr Dave Hindmarsh (ex RAMC!)