Background
FDB (First Databank) creates and delivers the world’s most powerful drug knowledge that ignites, inspires, and illuminates critical medication decisions. The company collaborates with partners to help improve patient safety, efficiency, and health outcomes.
Beyond its origins as a drug database supplier, FDB has developed sophisticated solutions deeply integrated with clinical systems and prescribing workflows used by frontline clinicians. These kinds of integration ensure unsurpassed patient specificity resulting in better health outcomes and an improved user experience.
FDB’s solutions now drive healthcare information systems that serve the majority of UK hospitals, GP practices, pharmacies, and many other areas of healthcare, used by thousands of clinicians every day.
The Need
FDB recently launched AnalyseRx, a game-changing medicines optimisation solution integrated with EMIS Web. The goal of AnalyseRx is to help NHS primary care teams proactively identify and easily action medicines optimisation opportunities across a patient population.
To extend this capability, FDB aimed to make AnalyseRx available to users of TPP SystmOne. The primary objective was to facilitate seamless integration, allowing more primary care teams to address additional medicines optimisation opportunities given that EMIS and TPP are the most widely used GP clinical systems in the UK.
FDB required the ability to ingest patient data in bulk nightly and process it through clinical algorithms to generate actionable insights. These insights needed to be accessible to clinicians via a browser interface integrated with SystmOne. Additionally, the integration needed to enable launching specific patient records from AnalyseRx to SystmOne and vice versa, ensuring a cohesive user experience. Key functionalities included accessing patient data, managing tasks and notes within the clinical system, and performing medication-related actions like starting, stopping, and replacing drugs based on algorithm recommendations. Compliance with NHS regulations, particularly regarding data security and patient confidentiality, was paramount. The solution aimed to enhance patient safety, streamline workflows, and support delivery of NHS incentive schemes.
FDB also sought to create a user-friendly interface that allowed healthcare professionals to navigate and utilise AnalyseRx within their existing systems to enhance overall healthcare delivery efficiency by reducing administrative burdens and streamlining clinical workflows.
The Solution
6B collaborated with FDB to support their aim of extending the capabilities of AnalyseRx to TPP SystmOne users.
Initially, 6B conducted a discovery phase to help FDB replicate the integration between AnalyseRx and EMIS Web for SystmOne, addressing FDB’s need for interoperability and seamless functionality.
6B supported the design and development of a solution architecture that included nightly bulk extraction of patient data from SystmOne, utilising SystmOne’s Strategic Reporting solution. This data, ingested into AnalyseRx, was processed through clinical algorithms to generate actionable insights, which were then presented to clinicians via a browser interface.
To enhance user experience, 6B helped implement single sign-on (SSO) functionality, allowing clinicians to access AnalyseRx without repeated logins. This was achieved by integrating AnalyseRx into SystmOne’s toolbar, enabling clinicians to seamlessly switch between systems. Furthermore, patient records could be launched bidirectionally between AnalyseRx and SystmOne, ensuring continuity and ease of access.
Key functionalities included the ability to add tasks and notes, manage medications, and update patient records through the IM1 SystmOne Client Integration API. These features ensured that clinicians could perform critical actions directly within the integrated systems, streamlining workflows and improving patient care.
Overall, the solution provided robust integration, compliance with
NHS regulations, and should go on to significantly enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of medication management within primary care settings.
The Impact
The solution developed by FDB and supported by 6B is currently undergoing integration testing readying it for release to TPP SystmOne users.
The integration facilitates better medication management and enhances workflow efficiency, allowing healthcare professionals to focus more on patient care. Compliance with NHS regulations ensures data security and patient confidentiality.
This innovative solution is expected to significantly improve medication safety, streamline processes, and support NHS priorities, ultimately leading to better patient outcomes across the UK.
“It’s been a pleasure to work with 6B on this major project, they brought with them expertise of healthcare APIs and system integration with industry standards.
Their approach to integrate with our existing development team and understand how we operate enabled them to become a part of our own team, providing their industry knowledge and expertise within our own development framework and methods, ensuring their input was fed directly into the hands of our developers in real time.
6B’s ability to flex dynamically between consultancy and ‘boots on the ground’ optimised their input and minimised cost, removing wastage and downtime from the development process as we needed to flex.”
– Phil Verplancke, Product and ITS Director at FDB