Buying a new system and preparing for migration

Your practice may be considering the purchase of a new GP clinical system and related software. This involves a request to the relevant buying team in your area, but before you do, there are some things you will need to consider. 

You will need to do some work to get ready for migration. This should be done before the kick off meeting.

The people, teams or organisations who might be required in this stage of the migration are:

• integrated care board (ICB) 
• IT delivery partner (this could be a third party supplier or a team within the ICB)
• practice manager 
• new system supplier

A new GP clinical system is known as a new Foundation solution on the Buying Catalogue. You can find information on how to search for different solutions on the Buying Catalogue pages.

Make sure the new GP clinical system meets your practice needs. Check the practice agreement to understand whether any charges apply if a migration is cancelled after placing an order. You can find more in the CCG-Practice Agreement V2.

To proceed, you will need to:

1. Confirm with your ICB which is the appropriate framework for the solution you are looking to move to. The Buying Catalogue shows the frameworks which are currently available. 
2. Complete a business justification template for changing your GP clinical system. Your ICB may have a specific template to use. 
3. Work with your practice staff, ICB IT delivery partner and the new supplier to manage the migration.
4. Get funding approval from ICBs (and any local boards). This is for other costs like training, core hardware or software upgrades.

Before you order a new GP clinical system, you need to agree on a provisional go live date. You should agree this with your practice, the ICB, the new supplier and any IT delivery partners. You should also check with your ICB team that the correct procurement processes are being followed. 

When procurement is complete, the ICB places the order. This is done through the Buying Catalogue. 

The ICB approves the order. The system migration request gets sent to the new GP system supplier. This should include the provisional go live date. 

The new supplier receives and accepts the order.

The new supplier will send a schedule of dates for key migration steps. These are for discussion at the kick off meeting. 

As part of the contractual migration process that existing suppliers are obliged to follow, the current supplier will provide a data extract from your practice to the new supplier. This will be on the initial data production date. Currently suppliers are allowed up to 15 working days to provide this extract, but actual delivery times may be less.   

The ICB sends a formal data extract request to the current supplier using the data extract request template. The extract will be provided by the existing supplier to the new supplier via an internet based safe file transfer protocol. 

Plan a date for the kick off meeting. Include all people who will work on the migration process (see the list in the kick off section). 

After the kick off meeting, decide when to set up the technical survey. See the technical survey section for further information.

Some IT delivery partners and suppliers conduct the technical survey remotely so may not need to be on site.