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The full printed version of the guideline is available. Included on this page is supporting material which is not available in the printed copy.
Nationally-supported IT product for producing SIGN-compliant referral letters
When SIGN 31 on referral letters first came out, an IT product called SIGN-IT was made available to support GP practices wishing to semi-automatically produce letters based on the guideline's structure. This product served well yet suffered from the major drawback of not being fully integrated with GP systems, notably Gpass.
Meanwhile a GP in Orkney, Peter Fay, was working on a more advanced product which was more fully integrated with Gpass. Known as "2nd Opinion", the product retrieves clinical and prescription data as well as demographics from GPASS. Along with user input, this is inserted into an MS Word template to produce the referral letter. A referrals database allows audit and includes a practice referrals report facility. Various other features were built in, making it a highly flexible and usable product for practices.
Following discussions with GP interests, an arrangement has been arrived at with Dr Fay effectively making "2nd Opinion" a national system. It will be distributed with Gpass Release 5 as an option for all, expected to be in March 2001.
It will be supported by the normal Gpass mechanisms. Discussions have been initiated on possible interest of GP systems other than Gpass.