Kick off

A kick off meeting is for everyone who will be involved in the migration. They discuss the end to end process of migrating between systems. The goal is to assign roles and ensure everyone knows what needs to happen and when. 

Some activities happen during the kick off meeting itself. Others happen outside the meeting, as you go through the migration.

The people, teams or organisations who might be required in this stage of the migration are:

• project manager 
• practice manager 
• practice staff 
• lead GP 
• new clinical system supplier 
• integrated care board (ICB) 
• IT delivery partner (such as commissioning support unit) 

By now you will have agreed a provisional go live date. You should also have received a schedule of key migration dates from the new supplier.  

You will need to produce a schedule of provisional dates for each milestone. Consider the activities and people involved to ensure their success. 

The key milestones are: 

• technical survey 
• initial data production and testing days 
• final data production and cutover 
• go live 
• training days

Once you have a provisional plan in place, confirm all the dates with the new supplier.

When developing your plan, you should: 

• hold weekly migration meetings 
• block time in people’s diaries 
• plan around holidays and training 
• plan around busier times 
• book rooms for training and other migration activities 
• reduce bookable rota slots during cutover, so there is less data to re-enter into the live system
• reduce bookable rota slots post go live, to allow time to adjust

You will need to manage the migration project effectively to meet timelines.

Create a central list of actions for each phase showing:

• a provisional date for each action
• who will complete them 
• the current status

Decide who takes responsibility for managing risks. Decide on strategies to deal with risk.

Establish a process for maintaining a hazard log.

Identify scenarios that might mean you have to rollback changes and create a plan for how to do this. 

Detail any system downtime and impact on core hours.

Identify who will be involved in the migration, their roles and responsibilities. 

Within your practice common roles are:

• practice manager
• practice staff
• general practitioner to act as lead GP
• clinical staff, including remote workers

You will need to involve roles, teams and organisations from outside your practice. One of these might be a delivery partner. You might also want to explore whether other supporting roles are available. These might include:

• business change
• training leads
• data quality teams

The Integrated Care Board (ICB) will also play a role in the migration.

Surrounding and community services should also be contacted. Examples include:

• pharmacies
• pathology laboratories
• Electronic Prescription Service (EPS)
• GP2GP
• Summary Care Record (SCR)
• out of hours
• 111
• any screening services 

You will also need to work with the current and new suppliers of the GP clinical system.

Remember to involve third party system suppliers that integrate with your current system. Examples include:

• DocMan
• Apollo Scan
• DispensIT  

When everyone has agreed the data migration plan, complete a clinical risk assessment. Consider any risks to clinical and patient safety.

If there is a risk from migrating, you should escalate it to the relevant management.