The Phoenix Partnership (Leeds) Ltd (TPP) is a software company based in

Horsforth Horsforth is a town and civil parishes in England, civil parish within the City of Leeds, in West Yorkshire, England, lying about five miles north-west of Leeds city centre. Historically a village within the West Riding of Yorkshire, it had a p ...

Leeds Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by populati ...

. It develops and supplies clinical software including

SystmOne SystmOne is a centrally hosted clinical computer system developed by Horsforth-based The Phoenix Partnership (TPP). It is used by healthcare professionals in the UK predominantly in primary care. The system is being deployed as one of the accredit ...

History

The partnership was formed in 1997 by Frank Hester, a computer programmer married to a GP, to create a patient-record storing system that would help GPs after witnessing his wife's "constant struggle with the lack of connectivity and integration between NHS services". The system that was created, SystmOne, was developed the following year as a clinical IT system that linked a GP practice and a diabetes service in

Bradford Bradford is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Bradford district in West Yorkshire, England. The city is in the Pennines' eastern foothills on the banks of the Bradford Beck. Bradford had a population of 349,561 at the 2011 ...

, UK.

Growth

By 2012, TPP's SystmOne held enough patient records that it could be used as a research database. In partnership with the

University of Leeds , mottoeng = And knowledge will be increased , established = 1831 – Leeds School of Medicine1874 – Yorkshire College of Science1884 - Yorkshire College1887 – affiliated to the federal Victoria University1904 – University of Leeds , ...

and the UK Government's

Technology Strategy Board Innovate UK is the United Kingdom's innovation agency, which provides money and support to organisations to make new products and services. It is a non-departmental public body operating at arm's length from the Government as part of the United ...

, in May TPP launched ResearchOne as a not-for-profit health and care research database. The company significantly increased its market opportunities when the then prime minister,

David Cameron David William Donald Cameron (born 9 October 1966) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2016 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2005 to 2016. He previously served as Leader o ...

, invited it on trading missions to both India and China in 2013. By January the following year, it signed its first memorandum of understanding with a Chinese province, the

Zhejiang Zhejiang ( or , ; , also romanized as Chekiang) is an eastern, coastal province of the People's Republic of China. Its capital and largest city is Hangzhou, and other notable cities include Ningbo and Wenzhou. Zhejiang is bordered by Jiang ...

provincial centre for disease prevention and control. In 2016, the company signed its first contract in the Middle East when it agreed with Qatari Integrated Intelligence Services to deliver SystmOne to the private healthcare sector across

Qatar Qatar (, ; ar, قطر, Qaṭar ; local vernacular pronunciation: ), officially the State of Qatar,) is a country in Western Asia. It occupies the Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East; it sh ...

, including approximately 300 primary care sites. In 2015, TPP attracted the attention of the prime minister, David Cameron, who visited the in-progress building site of new TPP head office. Cameron gave a speech saying, "What PPis doing here is incredible… Companies like TPP keep the UK at the forefront of innovation… TPP is an example of a great British business with immense potential." The significance of its work was reiterated in the same year when its CEO, Frank Hester, received an OBE for his contribution to healthcare in the UK.

Data breaches

In 2017, the SystmOne was found to have serious compliance concerns by the

Information Commissioner's Office The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) is a non-departmental public body which reports directly to the Parliament of the United Kingdom and is sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). It is the independe ...

(ICO). This affected 2,700 GP practices in the UK and a new data-sharing feature in the software. Between March 2015 and June 2018, another breach due to the SystmOne software occurred affecting the data of 150,000 patients. This shared the data of patients who had made a type 2 opt-out (which meant they did not allow their data to be used for anything other than their own clinical care). TPP offered an unreserved apology for the breach and is currently under investigation by the ICO. A statement to parliament regarding the breach was read out by the health minister and patients were informed by letter.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Phoenix Partnership Electronic health record software companies Private providers of NHS services Companies based in Leeds