FOI 2026/1594

Please accept this request for recorded information relating to GP practice Electronic Patient Record (EPR) system changes or requests to change involving your ICB within the last 24 months. If it would be helpful to restrict the scope by date, practice, or other relevant criterion, to fit the FOIA threshold, I would welcome your advice.

Please provide the following, for the last 24 months or as close as possible for any item:

1. Business cases and approvals: Copies of any business cases, approval papers, or decision records held by the ICB relating to EPR system changes by GP practices.
2. Processes and criteria: Any policies, guidance, or frameworks used by the ICB to determine whether a GP practice EPR change is approved, supported, or declined.
3. Funding and support: For each GP EPR system change in scope, copies of any documents or records showing whether the ICB provided funding or support, including where held: i) Amount; ii) Funding source (revenue or capital); iii) Any conditions or restrictions attached.
4. Preferred supplier policies: Any documentation (e.g. lists, catalogues, contractual documents, or policies) showing whether the ICB limits funding or support to specific preferred or approved EPR suppliers, including any preferred supplier lists or contractual constraints.
5. Delayed, paused, or rejected proposals: Records of any EPR change proposals that were delayed, paused, discouraged, or did not proceed, including any documents setting out reasons.
6. Strategy papers and board papers: Copies of any ICB strategy papers, board papers, or internal reports from the last 24 months that reference one or more of the following: i) GP EPR standardisation or convergence, ii) Reducing supplier variation in GP EPRs, iii) Preferred GP clinical system strategy.

If any of the requested information is already published, please provide direct links to where it can be found.

If retrieving all the requested material would exceed the appropriate cost/time limits, I would appreciate advice on how the request might be refined for compliance, for example by restricting the date range, number of practices, or specific document types.

Where possible, please provide data in a machine-readable format (eg, CSV or XLSX) for any lists or tabular information.

1. Over the past 2 years there have only been 3 migration of clinical system across Greater Manchester. All of these were in the Bolton locality in September / October 2024 and were from Vision to Emis.

Cedigem, the providers of Vision, had announced they were pulling out of the market in England. The practices had expressed they wanted to migrate to Emis to align with their PCN to provide consistency for the enhanced access contract and ARRS roles. As Bolton NHS Foundation Trust provide the IT to Bolton there was no funding available from NHS GM, so it was required to use the allocated Resilience funding for 24/25. Please see documentation attached.

**Word documents were sent to the requester with this response.  If you require a copy of the full response, together with the attachments, please contact NHS GM’s FOI team – nhsgm.foi@nhs.net **

Please note any individual’s names, and contact information have been removed/redacted from the embedded documents. This information is exempt from disclosure under section 40 (2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 as it constitutes personal data where disclosure would be in breach of the Data Protection Act 2018.

As section 40 (2) is an absolute exemption there is no duty to consider disclosure in the public interest. They are set out in Part II of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

2. All migrations are managed in line with NHS Digital Clinical System Migration Guide. Details can be found at Clinical system migration guide – NHS England Digital

3. See response to question 1.

4. See response to question 2.

5. 8 practices have expressed an interest to migrate to a new supplier under the NHSE TIF Framework. The requests are currently being assessed via the NHS GM ICB Governance process. As of yet no requests have been approved or rejected. Details of the TIF programme can be found here Tech Innovation Framework – NHS England Digital

6. There have been no papers presented on these subjects in the past 24 months.