Auto-integration

Auto-integration is a mechanism that will ensure electronic health records (EHRs) transferred over GP2GP will automatically integrate in the receiving system when a patient registers at a GP practice.

Currently, only manual integration exists which creates a large burden on GP practice administrators.

Process	Summary of change
Search and select patient	Manual step. No change.
Register patient	Manual step. No change.
GP2GP request and transfer of EHR	Automated step. No change.
Integrate the received EHR	Change from manual step to automated step.
Create medication review and degrade tasks	Automated step. No change.
Review, curate and use the EHR	Manual step. Change needed to ensure users are aware of records that are new to the practice and require curation. All tasks and workflows that are triggered by the integration of an EHR will remain

As a foundation system supplier you may find it useful to view the Auto-integration roadmap. This also contains the requirements and specification documentation for this product.

For general information about this service visit the GP2GP service homepage.

Background

Three interlinked issues have been identified with the current manual approach to GP2GP record integration which can, in certain scenarios, create clinical risk and significant burden on GP practices.

Clinical risk from the broken continuity of patient records caused by manual integration in an A to B to C scenario.
Clinical risk that the healthcare professional treating the patient is not aware of the availability of the EHR awaiting integration or is unable to access it when a record has not been integrated.
Administrative burden and waste caused by not integrating records within 8 days.

Benefits

Clinical safety

Records will be available to the treating clinician immediately and onward transfer of the record to a new GP practice will not be blocked by an administrative process at the previous practice.

Patient experience

Patient’s health record and history will be available to their new GP and therefore their care will not be impacted from delayed record transfer. For example, repeat patient medication won’t be delayed by the new GP having to contact the patient's previous practice for health record information/evidence or by the need to have an extended appointment with the patient to detail their previous medical history.

Significant reduction in burden for practices, estimated at 319,000 hours from:

1. The task of integrating over 3 million records per year (each taking between 2-10 mins to complete). Whilst completing this task practice users cannot complete other tasks such as answering patient phone calls.

2. The unnecessary printing and re-summarising of records of over 280,000 patient records in 2024 that transferred electronically, but were not integrated before the paper process was triggered.

Cost savings estimated at £6.1 million from the reduction of administrative burden and paper printing.

Additional costs will be saved from a reduction in transportation and logistical costs of moving unnecessarily printed records.

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

Practices will no longer be able to inadvertently block the transfer of information to the new data controller.

Who the service is for

Auto-integration will have the most significant effect on GP practice staff. The changes will ensure that a patient record is automatically integrated when received by a practice, removing the need for administrators to spend time manually integrating the record.

How it works

Auto-integration is a specification that must be implemented by foundation system suppliers in order to be used.

There is no user interface for auto-integration. Instead, once the specification has been implemented, it will remove part of the process of a GP practice receiving a patient record. When a GP2GP transfer occurs, the receiving practice will no longer have to use the manual integration process within their foundation system supplier software.

Last edited: 14 April 2025 4:43 pm