Electronic Information Systems Update - August 2002

Commencing October 2002, the PPA will be expanding its family of electronic information systems. ePACT.net and the Prescribing Toolkit will form part of a larger service that will provide standard and requestable reports plus data downloads. Much of this service expansion will be centered around a new Electronic Reporting Information Centre (ERIC).

Changes to the PPA's Electronic Information Systems are driven by a number of sources:

• National initiatives such as Shifting the Balance of Power (StBOP) and the extensions to Nurse Prescribing (NPEF)
  
• Feedback from users at workshops, conferences and in direct communication with the PPA
  
• Review of prescribing indicators by the Prescribing Indicators National Group

The following changes to the Electronic Information Systems have been implemented or are planned for 2002.

If you have any comments or suggestions on our plans for future development please contact us by email at Toolkit.Feedback@ppa.nhs.uk. If you have any problems with the operational systems please continue to report them to the Help Desk by email at help@ppa.nhs.uk or by telephone on 0191 2035050.

Prescribing Toolkit 2002-3 Quarter 1 Report

• Toolkit reports for 2002-03 Q1, released in August 2002, are based on the 95 former HAs.
  
• HA reports are based on aggregated GP list sizes instead of ONS projections.
  
• Indicators based on DDDs have been replaced by ADQ equivalents.
  
• Indicators for Premium Priced Combination Products have been withdrawn.
  
• Indicators for Premium Priced Modified Release Products have been withheld until the Prescribing Indicators National Group has reviewed them.
  
• A new Statins volume comparator has been introduced.
  
• Quarterly versions of the Potential Generic Savings and Specialist Drugs reports has been introduced.

More detailed information will be available in the Toolkit news page accompanying the Q1 reports.

Prescribing Toolkit 2002-3 Quarter 2 Report

• Reports for Q2 will be based on the 28 Strategic Health Authorities (StHAs) and will be released in December 2002. At this time the Q1 reports will be re-released based on the 28 StHAs.
  
• Additional nurse prescribing indicators will be released with the Q2 reports in December 2002. These indicators will provide information on prescribing from the Nurse Prescribing Extended Formulary.

ePACT.net for Hospital Prescribing Dispensed in the Community Version 7.0

Hospital ePACT.net was implemented with the release of prescribing data for February 2002 on 8 April 2002. Currently we are looking to expand the user base.

It provides an electronic service to Hospital Trusts allowing them to analyse data from hospital prescriptions dispensed in the community (FP10 HP and FP10 HP(ad) forms). The service provides much of the prescribing information provided to other ePACT.net users; plus hospital schedule information including dispenser details, fees, and patient charges. Initially this is a pilot service being used by two Hospital Trusts. The service will be rolled out to a further limited number of trusts by March 2003 and more widely in 2003-4.

Hospital Trusts and PCTs that are interested in participating in the next stage of the rollout of this service should contact the PPA help desk by email at help@ppa.nhs.uk or by telephone on 0191 2035050.

ePACT.net Imminent Changes

• Graph Templates - The PPA graph templates that are currently available have been reviewed and it has been decided to simplify the options by making 3 default templates available:
  
  • Default Trend
    
  • Default Practice Profile
    
  • Default BNF Profile

  This will come into effect with the release of August's prescribing data in early October. Any templates created by users will not be affected. Further details can be found here

The new Family of PPA Information Services

From October 2002 we plan to offer a family of PPA Electronic information services. The new services include:

• For PCT, StHA and National ePACT.net users the ability to request reports to be viewed later. Release Notes and Example 1
  
• For PCT, StHA and National users the ability to request data for direct download to your machine Release Notes
  
• PMD reports online (Planned December 2002) Example 2
  
• IPP reports online (Planned December 2002) Example 3
  
• PD2 reports online (Planned February 2003)

All examples of reports and screens linked to above are subject to change before release.

Much of the new family of PPA information services will be available through the Electronic Reporting Information Centre (ERIC).

The October release represents the start of this family of information services provided by the PPA. Soon after we intend to extend the services to provide:

• A fuller set of ePACT.net fields will be made available within the offline facilities
  
• The ability to ask for and receive regular information - Repeat requests in EPACT terms
  
• Ability to distribute information to subjects of your reports
  
• PCT Board Level Reports

In order to benefit from the full range of new services, you will want to install an extension to your Internet Explorer. This extension is known as a Java 1.4 plugin and will enable your Internet Explorer Browser and us, as developers, to make use of the latest facilities offered by our development tools (The Java language). This will also allow us to improve the usability of the ePACT.net client over the course of 2003, including ToolTips and a more positive user interface experience. This plugin will need to be downloaded from Sun Microsystems, the suppliers of our development tools. Further information and support will be made available soon.

ePACT.net Version 8.0

New functionality will be introduced during October

• Inclusion of Low Income Scheme Index (LISI) scores for practices. More information on LISI is available from the PSU
  
• Offline Requesting for Report and Download. See the new family of PPA information services above.

ePACT.net Version 9.0

Version 9.0 of ePACT.net is planned for implementation with the release of prescribing data for October 2002 in December 2002. New functionality will be:

• Inclusion of Average Daily Quantities (ADQs) and Defined Daily Doses (DDDs)
  
• Information on prescribing from the extended Nurse Formulary (NPEF) distinguishing between nurse prescribers qualified to prescribe from the NPF and those qualified to prescribe from the NPEF.

The release will include changes as part of Shifting the Balance of Power:

• A service for Strategic Health Authority (StHA) users. This will be similar to the existing Health Authority service, which will be withdrawn. At the request of the Department of Health, this service will not allow access to practice-level data.
  
• The PCT and StHA level information used in ePACT.net services will reflect the organisational make up of PCTs and StHAs as at October 2002. This will enable users to analyse trends of prescribing. PCT service users will still need to use the "Historical" option on reports or graphs to get information in this trend view.

EPACT Retirement

The EPACT system, which is used by HAs, Regional Offices and National Users, is being retired in November 2002, prior to the release of prescribing data for October 2002. Additional features will be provided by ePACT.net for PCT, StHA and National Users.

ePACT.net Future Development

Further releases of ePACT.net are planned. We encourage input from our users on improvements that could be made to the system.

The following suggestions are being considered and input from users is welcomed - please contact us by email at Toolkit.Feedback@ppa.nhs.uk and cast a vote for your favourites from the following list or suggest your own enhancement:

1. Single logon (one user ID & password for access to ePACT.net and Toolkit and the need to only logon once on each visit to the PPA Website).
   
2. Combined nurse & practice data service.
   
3. Information at GP level in PCT service.
   
4. Geographical presentation as well as graphs.
   
5. Specialised logon to cater for non-standard organisations (e.g. federations).
   
6. Historical view to be the default.
   
7. Toolkit tags.
   
8. Information on service status (e.g. how busy it is).
   
9. Data for more than 36 months.
   
10. Enhancements to the offline report facility being introduced with version 8.
    
11. Improved performance.
    
12. Improved usability - e.g. the ePACT.net Digging Man should continue to dig while a request is being serviced.
    
13. Information Services to Practices.

We will collate feedback from users and publish it in the next news update.

Usage Statistics on ePACT.net from 1 May 2002 to 21 August 2002

1. Daily trend of logins

Chart 1 shows the average number of logins per day between 1 May 2002 and 21 August 2002. The dates of availability of new monthly data is indicated by the orange bars.

Generally, there are around 400 to 500 logons per day. The ePACT.net database is accessed over 780 million times each day!

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There is a slight increase in usage immediately following the monthly data loads, but generally the usage of the system is constant throughout the month.

2. Daily trend of logins

There is not a large difference between usage of the system during the week, although Wednesday is the busiest day. However, Friday is the quietest day with only 380 logins on average.

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3. Hourly trend of logins

Chart 3 shows the average number of logins per hour. The busiest time of the day is between 10am and 12pm. During working hours, 12pm to 2pm, and after 4pm are the quietest. Only a small number of users login outside the normal working day of 9am to 5pm.

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