As data controllers and doctors with a duty of confidence to their patients, GPs are obliged to ensure that patients are properly informed of significant new data processing and that their permission has been sought prior to us sharing their data – and that this data is and will be handled responsibly, securely, and transparently.

This is an open letter to all GP Practices working in the NHS to highlight data concerns that have been planned by NHS Digital. Patients should be aware of the how their data is used and GP practice staff should be aware of how best to inform their patients.

From the 1st July 2021, patient data from GP records will be extracted and sent to NHS Digital for the purposes of "planning and research".

Patients of course have the right to object - but the question is whether patients have been consulted? And who's responsibility is this?

Ramadan will still feel different for Muslims this year as it's observed during a period of lockdown and we need to be mindful of our health as we fast during this holy month. Here are some resources for you, your organisation and your patients.

Are you running out of hard disk space on your PC?
Is your clinical system (eg EMIS) running slowly?
Are your popups, templates or protocols not running correctly?

If so, you may need to clear up and clean your system - here's a few things to try!

A webinar was held in November 2020, aimed at GP practices across North East London to help demystify online consultations as well as highlighting the benefits and the hurdles as well as the challenges of implementation!

Do you get memory errors in EMIS Web?
There may be a range of reasons for why this happens, but here are some tips to try and manage those dreaded errors!
Here are some of the tips i have seen work - if you have any others, please let me know and will look to add them!

As NHS GP practices, it is important for us to understand out population, particularly when it comes to COVID19 cases and ethnicity is increasingly relevant to understand. To help practices, a series of EMIS searches have been developed.

If you are a registered healthcare professional, you are able to now register to issue expectant mothers with a digital certificate.

As NHS professionals, we are using NHSMail increasingly for communication and also for collaboration using Microsoft Teams. For us to use this judiciously, we need to ensure we have our accounts set up correctly. This will also ensure we are on the correct mailing list.