The appointment management and electronic patient record (EPR) system, Tiara9, has entered the final stage of the e-Referrals (e-RS) / Choose & Book certification process, and gone live as a ‘First of Type’ site at Frimley Park Hospital.

The Tiara9 system is used throughout the Occupational Therapy, Physiotherapy, Dietetics, and Speech and Language teams at the hospital, and accreditation will allow GPs to book patient appointments with any of their services directly.

Tiara9 is developed by software provider, Ethitec, who has been working closely with HSCIC (Health and Social Care Information Centre) to achieve NHS Spine compliance. Ethitec’s Managing Director, Simon Taylor, commented: “We are delighted that Tiara9 has successfully completed all witness testing by HSCIC and been granted the DevMAC (Development Milestone Achievement) certificate to enable live operation to proceed.”

Once the system has run at Frimley Park Hospital for a 10 day period without major incident, a full deployment certificate will be granted which will allow any organisation requiring access to e-RS/Choose & Book to adopt Tiara9. Ethitec will then become one of the first independent software providers to complete the five stage e-RS/Choose & Book certification process. The NHS e-RS service is estimated to go live in November 2014, when it will replace the Choose & Book system currently in operation.

e-RS / Choose & Book roll-out is key to the vision of offering patients a choice of place, date and time for their first appointment, and of eliminating paper processes around the management of appointments and patient records.

Taylor continues: “Linking to the NHS Spine will be a significant step forwards, not only for us, but also in terms of opening up the options for NHS Care Commissioning Groups to procure services from AQPs and NHS service providers.”

Tiara9 is in use at around 20 NHS sites and has a proven track record as a paperless EPR system.