How to request configuration of data sharing (EMIS Web)

If your organisation wants to share data with other organisations and/or view data added by other organisations, you need to have sharing agreements in place.

EMIS can configure data sharing for you in EMIS Web. But before you contact us, you need to:

Review any sharing agreements that your organisation already has in place, because there may be problems if the settings (rulesets) you ask for in a new sharing agreement conflict with the settings in an existing one.
Discuss your requirements with your local information governance (IG) officer and ask them to make any local arrangements for data sharing.
Make sure that the data controller (practice manager, senior partner, lead GP, IG lead or Caldicott guardian) of each organisation that you want to include in a new sharing agreement is happy for the organisation to be included.

You then need to send us details of your EMIS Web data sharing requirements by completing a request form, using the information below to help you. Please read this information very carefully, as the configuration you request will directly affect the information that you share with other organisations. If you're a BAU (Business as Usual) organisation, contact your Customer Relationship Manager to set up an EMIS Web data sharing agreement, as they will work with you to help complete the request forms. Please read the information below very carefully, as the configuration you request will directly affect the information that you share with other organisations.

We'll forward the completed request form to the main contact for each organisation that will use the sharing agreement, to give them an overview of what will be included.

To make sure data sharing works properly, all organisations in the sharing agreement must meet the third party network access requirements. We can provide guidance for your firewall configuration teams.

Forms to request the demographic data import service are also available for download.

Definitions

We use the following descriptions of organisations in the data sharing request forms.

Term	Definition
Requesting organisation	The organisation requesting is a sharing agreement. This organisation owns the sharing agreement, but may not be part of the sharing agreement itself (i.e. may not want to share or view data).
Sharing organisation	An organisation that shares its data with one or more other organisations.
Viewing organisation	An organisation that views data from one or more other organisations.

Data sharing configuration options

We can provide three different data sharing configuration options in EMIS Web. The following table describes the three options and tells you how to complete the organisation details table on the request form, depending on the option you need.

The organisation details must be the same for each option you select. If you need more than one configuration option (for example, a one to many sharing agreement and a many to one sharing agreement), you must complete a request form for each option.

We’ll configure a sharing agreement for each configuration option you request, and you’ll need to activate each sharing agreement in EMIS Web.

Configuration option	Definition	How to complete the table*
Option 1: One sharing organisation to many viewing organisations (one to many)	One organisation shares its data, but can't view data from other organisations in the sharing agreement. Other organisations can view the sharing organisation's data, but don't share their own data with the sharing organisation or any other organisation in the sharing agreement.	Sharing organisation: Type organisation details in the first table row. In the Share data column, type Yes. In the View data column, type No. All other organisations: Type organisation details in the second table row and further rows as required. In the Share data column, type No. In the View data column, type Yes.
Option 2: Many sharing organisations to one viewing organisation (many to one)	One organisation can view data from all organisations in the sharing agreement. Other organisations in the sharing agreement share their data, but can't view data from the sharing organisation or any other organisation.	Viewing organisation: Type organisation details in the first table row. In the Share data column, type No. In the View data column, type Yes. All other organisations: Type organisation details in the second table row and further rows as required. In the Share data column, type Yes. In the View data column, type No.
Option 3: All organisations to share and view data (many to many)	All organisations in the sharing agreement share their data with all other organisations and can view data from all other organisations.	All organisations: Type each organisation's details in a separate table row. In the Share data column, type Yes. In the View data column, type Yes.

*On the request form for cross organisation appointments (QF1092), the column headings are Share appointments and View or book appointments.

Data sharing types

You can share data from four different areas of EMIS Web. We've listed these in the table below, with links to more information and to the request form you need to complete for each type.

Sharing type	Use to (Click links for more information)	Request form
Care Record sharing	Share data from selected Care Record modules or all Care Record modules with other organisations - see also notes below. Patient demographics sharing is automatically included in Care Record sharing agreements.	QF1091 EMIS Web Care Record sharing configuration request
Patient demographics sharing	Share basic patient information (name, address etc) with other organisations Patient demographics sharing is automatically included in Care Record sharing agreements.	QF1094 EMIS Web patient demographics sharing configuration request
Cross organisation appointments	Book appointments with other organisations	QF1092 EMIS Web cross org appointments configuration request
Cross organisation tasks	Share tasks with users or teams in other organisations	QF1093 EMIS Web cross org tasks configuration request

When we've configured data sharing for you, our customer fulfilment team will let you know. Each organisation that needs to use the sharing agreement must then activate it in EMIS Web Data Sharing Manager. To access Data Sharing Manager, you must have RBAC activity B0109 Local Restricted System Administration in your role profile.

Data sharing rulesets

The collection of settings configured for a data sharing agreement is called its 'ruleset'. The ruleset determines, for example, who can use the sharing agreement and what information they can see.

If your organisation needs an additional sharing agreement with different settings to an existing one (i.e. with a different ruleset), we use speciality-based sharing to prevent conflicts between the two different rulesets. We'll ask the sharing organisation for the new agreement to add a new speciality to its organisation details in Organisation Configuration, and we'll then assign the ruleset for the new sharing agreement to that speciality.

To help us keep configuration work to a minimum and as straightforward as possible, we recommend that you review your existing sharing agreements before you request a new sharing agreement and use the same settings, if possible.

If you're a sharing organisation and we've asked you to add a new speciality, follow these instructions:

Access Organisation.
Click , point to Configuration, click Organisation Configuration, and then click the Organisation tab at the bottom of the navigation pane.
In the navigation pane, select the required organisation (i.e. the sharing organisation for the new sharing agreement).
On the ribbon, click Edit.
In the left-hand pane of the Edit Organisation screen, click Organisation details.
In the Specialities field, click Add.
On the Find Speciality screen, select a speciality that reflects your data sharing requirements. You can select any speciality that's available in the list (provided that it's not already in use for data sharing purposes), but we recommend that you select the speciality that's closest to your actual requirements, e.g. for a sharing agreement for extended access, select Out of Hours Service.
Click OK.
On the Edit Organisation screen, click OK to update the organisation details.

Notes about Care Record sharing agreements

The Care Record Summary includes problems, medication, allergies, alerts, recent activity including appointments and health status.

Patient warnings are only shared if the owning organisation has specified that they should be visible to other organisations (i.e. cross organisation patient warnings).

Patient demographics sharing is automatically included in Care Record sharing agreements.

The following table lists other Care Record sharing options, any other information you need to provide if you select them, and/or what will happen if you select each option.

Option selected	Action needed/effect if you select Yes
Free text sharing	Free text associated with codes in all the Care Record modules you select will be shared.
Point of contact consent	Users will need to get patient consent every time they view a shared care record.
Sharing with certain job categories only	You need to select the job categories you want to include in the sharing agreement from the lists in QF1186 EMIS Web care record data sharing job category requirements, and attach the completed form to your request form.
Include or exclude specific codes	By default, all codes from the GP Summary exclusion code list are excluded from shared data, but if you select Yes, all codes on this list will be included. You can't exclude/include certain codes only: your choice applies to the whole list.
Allow viewing organisations to copy data to their local record	The Copy to local option will be enabled.

Need more help?

If you need help with completing request forms for new data sharing agreements, email cfdatasharing@emishealth.com or call 0330 0241 276, Option 3. If you need help with deactivating an existing data sharing agreement, we’ve provided this step-by-step guide to assist.

Information Governance

In terms of good information governance, as a controller it is important that you understand who you are sharing data with (and why) and that you keep this under regular review. As you will be aware, within EMIS Web we have the data sharing manager module which enables you control the patient level data that is being shared on your behalf – in terms of the recipients and the types of data being presented to them. Within the data sharing module you can see a list of the relevant data recipients together with an overview of the relevant arrangement that exists between you (as the controller) and the third party that you are sharing data with (who may be acting as a controller in their own right or who may be acting as a processor delivering services to you, such as analytics).

The data sharing module also enables you activate (and deactivate) sharing requests (i.e. to switch on and off the sharing of data). We recommend that you undertake a regular, scheduled, review of the active ‘sharing agreements’ that you have in place and determine whether they remain valid or if they need to be varied or deactivated (as well as reviewing any outstanding requests for sharing that may be present).