Emis Group impresses Chinese delegation during visit

The delegation was on a visit to the Royal London Hospital, where Emis was invited to showcase how its personal health record – integrated with Apple’s HealthKit – enables UK citizens to manage their own health in partnership with their GP and other health professionals. Chris Spencer, CEO of Emis Group, told The Yorkshire Post that although they don’t operate in the Chinese market, they were open to potentially doing so.

He said: “It’s interesting in terms of volume, it’s an extremely large population and it’s an emerging market. The healthcare economy is an emerging market for US and UK companies.”

The visit to Royal London Hospital by the delegation, led by China’s IT and digital health head Zhang Feng, was the final stop on a five-day fact-finding visit to the UK.

Mr Spencer said that people from other countries viewed the NHS with a different perspective. He said: “People come across the NHS with a remarkably different perspective. The NHS is a highly admirable thing. From time to time things will go wrong but most of the time things will go right.”

More than 6,500 users have logged 1.1 million pieces of information since the PHR was launched five months ago in partnership with Apple.

The group’s chief medical officer Dr Shaun O’Hanlon showed delegates the PHR, which links 39 million GP patient records held in EMIS Web with patients’ personal data from health and fitness measurement devices and apps. The demonstration left Mr Feng impressed enough to invite Emis to Beijing.

“We are going to see if they were being just polite, if they were being more than polite then we will take up the offer,” said Mr Spencer.

He added that China faces similar problems to the UK with an ageing population. He said: “We have the same sort of problems.”