Emis helps out NHS front line staff during pandemic

The Leeds-based firm said that as a supplier to the NHS, it was in a position to help the fight against Covid-19 at multiple levels.

This ranged from supplying free access to its video consultation software to front line clinicians, to offering up-to-date public advice and guidance on Patient.info, through to supporting research projects working on Covid-19 prevention and cure.

Emis CEO, Andy Thorburn, said: “Doing the right thing for our customers at all times was the group’s guiding principle during the first half of 2020, and Emis Health made a number of technology solutions available at no extra cost to support NHS front line staff.”

Emis said that free access to video consultation software was made available to 5,200 community pharmacies and 4,000 GP practices during lockdown.

“The key thing for us during the period, especially between March to June, was to do the right thing by our customers,” said Mr Thorburn.

“Short term profitability and revenue was not on our mind. Part of our strategy was - what do we need to do to help? We’ve got a video capability and we decided to make that free for GPs. We haven’t charged them for that and we don’t plan to.

“We also did that with community pharmacy. Community pharmacy is incredibly important to keep prescription drugs moving through.

“The key thing is forget about charging people for things. Let’s do the right thing and support the national cause.”

Emis has also supported Covid research projects.

“As part of the special legislation, some of the traditional rules could be pushed aside to do the bigger thing for the country,” said Mr Thorburn.

“The Secretary of State wanted to establish some research projects around Covid. We were the agent to collect the data.”

Mr Thorburn said the group’s digital triage product, Online Consult, was used 68,000 times per week during lockdown (an increase from 2,400 uses per week in the earlier part of the year), helping practices to manage patient requests for appointments.

He was speaking as Emis announced half year results for the six months to June 30, which it described as good results in line with expectations.

Total revenue fell 2 per cent to £78m, but recurring revenue rose 5 per cent to £63.5m.

Emis said that no staff were furloughed and no redundancies took place during lockdown.

“That decision was 100 per cent considered,” said Mr Thorburn.

“This is not about short term profitability. It’s about supporting the NHS. Continuity of staff and relationships are absolutely vital. While we thought the furlough scheme from the Government was excellent, we felt it was inappropriate for us to take advantage of that.

“We very quickly moved to home working. We wanted to protect our colleagues’ health, but in equal measure, by protecting our colleagues’ health, we could protect our service levels because we knew we absolutely had to keep our services up and available to support the wider NHS.

“The Emis team were outstanding. We couldn’t have asked for any more from anyone. They absolutely stepped up.”