What you need to know about the conneQt Platform – Q&A

Our conneQt® Platform has been behind our popular NHS Spine products such as CP-IS and SCR, but we are delighted to announce a new IM1 integration product which is now available on our ConneQt Platform. It combines the new conneQt® Toolbar and conneQt® Send Consultation to provide a seamless interface between GPS and third-party suppliers. We interviewed Solutions Director Dan Cooper and VP of R&D Craig Millard to give you an overview of what our new IM1 integration product can offer and how it can meet your needs…

Q: Firstly, can you give us a quick intro to Quicksilva? 

Dan: At Quicksilva everything we do is about trying to make the complex, simple and we believe our people are the key to achieving that. By fostering an environment of innovation and development, our team looks at any complex process and solution through a new set of eyes and we pride ourselves on being a responsible trustworthy supplier who celebrates active partnerships.

Q: What is this element of the conneQt® Platform tool that Q has developed?  

Craig: For some time now, we have been developing this new element of the conneQt® Platform, which combines a number of different integration points from the three main GP system suppliers (EMIS Web, TPP SystmOne, and Cegedim Vision) into a single set of simple APIs. A company can link with these APIs to leverage the amazing benefits of the IM1 framework to save clinicians time and get data to where it needs to go to save time and improve patient care in the NHS!

Q: Why has it been developed?

Dan: Given our work over the years with the central NHS spine services, many of our partners have come to us and asked if we had solutions to help with GP system integrations. Many of them knew of IM1 and some were integrated with at least one GP supplier, but connecting to all three was often a challenge due to the different API formats for each supplier. Changes to contracts in the NHS allowed us to start developing this new product, which enables partners to link to multiple GP suppliers through one set of APIs, making the process much simpler and reducing both compliance and development time. 

Q: Who will this new product help most? 

Craig: It’s hard to say, from a developers perspective, like myself, working with one set of APIs rather than three makes the development of products a lot simpler, and from a compliance point of view, it reduces the amount of paperwork and potential errors. From a clinician’s perspective, it makes their job a lot easier and could save thousands of hours of administrative work. Just the simple task of not having to individually log in to each system and transcribe patient details from one place to another could be transformative. It’s often not the flashy tech that makes the biggest difference, it’s the ones that stop them from having to do repetitive tasks. And finally, From a patient’s perspective, the less time their clinicians is spent doing admin, the more time they have to spend with the patient. We all know how stretched the NHS is, so anything we can do to give that little bit of time back to the clinician and patient should be explored. 

Q: What makes conneQt® Platform unique?

Dan: There are lots of awesome tools out there on the market now that help GPs save time and connect more effectively with their patients, but until now it has not been possible to offer a platform for IM1 that enables companies to connect their clinical systems to all the GP system suppliers, without having to go through compliance individually with each one which can take a lot of time. At Quicksilva, we believe in offering an ecosystem where partners can onboard to IM1 quickly and efficiently, not maintain estates of software in the GP surgeries and benefit from infrastructure that is already out there, reducing rollouts and time to patient benefits, saving time and money for all those involved.

Q: What is the installation process and how long will it take for it to go live? 

Craig: Well that’s the benefit of going with the conneQt® Platform, there is no “installation” as such because we do that for you. All you have to do is connect to our APIs, supply the information required for compliance with the IM1 teams and you are up and running. In terms of how long it takes to go live, a lot will depend on your own resources and how complex you want to get with your own software. We recommend a very focused project to achieve this as this tends to get the best results which we support you with. If you follow this type of approach, a few months should be enough to go from a standstill, through development and compliance, to live. 

Q: Why should you choose Quicksilva as your trusted partner? 

Dan: It’s a great question. I would have to say it’s because of our people and that each of us have the ‘QFactor’ but each in our own individual ways. We all have a clear sense of purpose to make the complex simple, and this permeates all areas of the business from the development team all the way to the solutions team. You can find out more on our Who we are page. 

Craig: I think what helps us stand out, isn’t just that we have been doing this for 20+ years, but the fact we have proved time and time again that we can simplify through both technical and compliance the time and energy it takes to onboard to digital NHS services. Ultimately if we can save a number of health tech companies time, it saves them money, which means they can charge less, and through scale, this saves the whole NHS money and gets new technology in the hands of the clinicians sooner, so everyone wins. 

If you’d like to find out more about Quicksilva and our IM1 conneQt® Platform solution please visit our conneQt Platform page or contact us at solutions@qxlva.com