Current Achievements

Recent topics worked on by NUG Watchdog committee

• The core of the NUG watchdog team is Janet Wright, Hasib Ur-Rub & Charlie Stuart Buttle who meet 3 or 4 times per year with Andy Whitwam (EMIS Director of Support Services) & others at EMIS to review issues of concern mostly relating to EMIS Support. We cover a very wide range of topics, sometimes making rapid progress but often moving slowly but carefully! The topics arise from user input (often from questionnaires that we conduct), or from our own observations or information received at LUG meetings and also from discussions on the EMIS email list or forum.
• Two members of this team review and provide user input into the Support information documents that EMIS publish on their website; look out for the ‘NUG approved’ logo.
• The whole of the NUG committee review patch documents destined for all users.
• Also part of the Watchdog team is Ralph Sullivan who specialises in reviewing legal documentation such as contracts.
• 3 members of the NUG committee also review ‘EMIS in Practice’ before it is sent out by EMIS approximately quarterly.

This is a sample of topics recently covered by the core group:

1. EMIS has rearranged user documentation on their website so that it is all in one place & the search facilities are considerably improved. 
2. Hazard warnings have been added to parts of LV where changes are irreversible or potentially dangerous. 
3. Audit trails have been discussed in an attempt to open more user access to them and to improve their usability. This is a continuing topic. 
4. A letter is now sent to all proposed installations or upgrades of EMIS prio to installation to give a user’s perspective on the important aspects of which to be aware. 
5. The old LV text based Mentor and PIL docs were removed as they were no longer being updated and therefore potentially hazardous. 
6. The status of Prodigy was clarified and the old integrated version inactivated as it was no longer being updated. 
7. A confidentiality clause has been added to third party software contracts to ensure the same level of confidentiality as EMIS use 
8. The LV.exe file on users’ clinical servers available for rebuilds is now updated 6 monthly 
9. A deferral option for patch documentation alerts was introduced for LV. 
10. EMIS support telephone extension numbers are now applied automatically in ECR Tracker. 
11. We continue to pick up on incidents that might indicate a procedural problem to check that EMIS Support have appropriate systems in place. 
12. We have ensured that EMIS have methods to link separate but related ECRs together and to avoid issuing new ECR for same problem. 
13. We have investigated the risks of a second disk of 2 mirrors failing shortly after the first. 
14. We have clarified the boundary between EMIS support and user training. 
15. Where ECR’s are passd to EMIS Development as “SBID”s, the SBID status should now be updated 3 monthly on ECR Tracker.