Emis started to prepare for Covid in January and has helped GPs, hospitals, pharmacists and the public

Covid-19 alarm bells started ringing in January for Andy Thorburn and his team at healthcare software developer Emis.
Emiss CEO, Andy ThorburnEmiss CEO, Andy Thorburn
Emiss CEO, Andy Thorburn

Through its experience of global pandemics, the Leeds-based firm quickly realised that this new virus wasn’t going to stay in China. Instead, it predicted Covid-19 was highly likely to affect the whole world.

As Emis’s CEO, Thorburn knew he had to act quickly.

“We saw the pandemic coming pretty early. With the nature of what we do, we keep an eye on things,” he says.

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“There were early reports coming from China towards the turn of the year and our chief medical officer, Shaun, (Dr Shaun O’Hanlon) obviously flagged it and said: ‘Look, I think we’ve got to get ready here’.

“So the big thing we did in January and February was to configure our systems with some new functionality so we’d be able to meet the demands of Covid and we did that in advance of our customers asking. Shaun was around when the Bird Flu issue came up which everyone worried about.

“There have been a number of pandemics over the 30 years of Emis’ history and so the key thing was getting systems ready, building templates in Emis Web, which is our key GP clinical system, and making sure that our team was mobilised as we suspected that what was happening in China was coming towards us with a big challenge.”

When the Prime Minister announced the UK was going into lockdown on March 23, Emis was fully prepared.

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“That’s when we moved into real response mode,” recalls Thorburn.

“Every day we were receiving 75 to 100 calls from all parts of the NHS. People think about us as a GP provider, but that’s actually only a third of our business.

“Hospitals and A&E (Accident and Emergency) are a big part of our world. Community pharmacy and making sure that prescription drugs continue is also big.

“Part of our job was helping sort challenges for them. In March and April, we were making sure that we provided good facilities and we also decided to give free video calls.”

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Emis built some functionality for its community pharmacy partners so they were able to do video calls with customers once it became clear the high street was going into lockdown.

“It was a combination of advanced system planning and providing free services because our view was: ‘This is not about making money. This is about doing the right thing’.”

Emis also provided patient data to the Nightingale Hospitals in Harrogate and London so hospital staff could get confidential access to the patient’s background at very short notice.

Throughout the pandemic, Emis has supported both the NHS and the general public by supplying free access to its video consultation software to front line clinicians.

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“Our video software was used by GPs and also community pharmacists. We made it available and they did video calls,” says Thorburn.

“We provided remote working capabilities to GPs so we had Emis Web on a special device that securely connected to the NHS network, which enabled GPs to work from home.

“There was quite a demand for that in early March and we fulfilled that demand really, really well.

“We scrambled really well and people were very appreciative of that. Part of the design is to make sure that if you’re on the move, you can use it. Because of the clinical safety, the patient data safety side, you have to use special software, specially configured - not just a regular PC.

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“We were able to make all of that available with the right security to go on to the NHS backbone network.”

One of the most vital aspects for Emis was security, ensuring patient data wasn’t compromised.

“Security is non-negotiable for us and obviously for our customers and the NHS,” says Thorburn.

“That is why those devices - we call them Emis Anywhere - have special protocols on them and are linked in to the NHS backbone.

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“It was in collaboration with NHS Digital, which is our biggest individual customer. Its job is to look after the people in the front line and that was applying to hospitals, community pharmacies and community workers. People were still out visiting those poor folks in hospices. You’ve got to make sure they’ve got the right tools.”

In addition to the medical profession, Emis has gone out of its way to help the general public.

“The demand from the public on our consumer-facing website, patient.info, grew dramatically through lockdown,” says Thorburn.

“It increased by about 40 per cent. Typically, we have 10 million visitors a month so we were spiking well above that.”

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As part of its service to the nation, Emis asked Covid-19 patients to provide details of their symptoms and to share their experience of what it was like to catch the virus.

“42,000 people agreed to do that in the first week,” says Thorburn.

“We were really interested about what they were experiencing and that’s the sort of data that can be shared with other healthcare professionals.

“It shows individual citizens want to share their health experience to the benefit of everyone. That was amazing. We’re not making money from that. It’s absolutely not about making money.”

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The firm is also playing an indirect role in the search for a cure.

“Indirectly we are absolutely supporting the search for a cure by making data available. We’ve made it available free of charge,” says Thorburn.

Throughout the pandemic, Emis has been keen to bolster its workforce, making it one of the few UK firms to be hiring staff rather than making them redundant.

“Our HR team felt it was important to bring in people who wanted a career change. Apprentices don’t necessarily need to be young people,” says Thorburn.

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“We took on 12 apprentices in the first wave. There will be more. We are one of the few companies that’s hiring during Covid.

“We actually brought in 78 people in the first half of this year.”

The firm’s full time employment number is now just under 1,600.

In these difficult times, Thorburn said the most important issue is to look after both colleagues and customers. The team decided that one of the best ways to support colleagues was to extend its flexible working policy.

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“This was really, really big for us. As we saw Covid coming, we knew we would be working from home,” he says.

“People hand kids off to grandparents. What we realised during Covid is that wasn’t going to happen because of the risk to elderly people.

“We designed our approach around every individual to suit their family needs. One lady was working early, doing her work from 6.30am to 9.30am and then looking after her kids to 4.30pm and then coming back online. We were absolutely happy with that.

“Our mantra in the lockdown is looking after colleagues and customers in equal measure. We have put family first and that guided all our decisions.

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“The response we’ve had from our team has been outstanding.”

Without doubt it has been a challenging year for Emis, but Thorburn and his team are doing everything they can to help colleagues, customers and the NHS get through the pandemic.

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