This landmark achievement builds upon Ensemble being the first to attain an ITK accreditation from NICA in September 2010. InterSystems is the only supplier to deliver this breadth of ITK compliance, which highlights InterSystems' commitment to driving the ITK initiative and the NHS' "connect all" philosophy. The ITK compliant service bundles are available now and free of charge to existing InterSystems' NHS customers.

The NICA Technology Office created the Toolkit specification as a set of standards and frameworks for interoperability, covering transactional and analytical services aimed at accelerating the pace of delivery. The ITK initiative was introduced by the Department of Health to overcome common integration problems experienced by Trusts which included:

• The inability for information to flow easily between departments and organisations, often because of an IT infrastructure that was too inflexible
• Untimely, unsecure, and cumbersome user access to patient data within and across care settings
• High deployment and maintenance costs to integrate applications and introduce new IT leveraged services

By using an application with full ITK compliance a Trust can reduce the cost of integration, increase the flexibility of their IT infrastructure and remove the barriers to implementing innovative solutions that connect applications, appliances, and devices. The widespread adoption of the ITK complaint services by NHS users and their software suppliers will increase the sharing of information between care settings in hospitals, GPs and communities. It will also facilitate the creation of end-to-end connected processes focused around the patient that will enhance the patient experience and improve clinical outcomes.

To achieve the accreditation milestone, InterSystems worked closely with the Department of Health and a number of Trusts on practical deployments before successfully completing the rigorous testing process. This involved running predefined validation checks using the ITK 'Test Bench', which includes positive interface testing, negative testing, and end-to-end simulation, culminating in a thorough compliance report.

Brett Marshal, Head of the NICA, commented: "Our goal is that within two years the majority of healthcare applications will be ITK compliant enabling data to flow more easily between Trust departments, and crucially, existing Spine systems. Once again InterSystems is the first to achieve full accreditation for its remaining services bundles. They are already working on practical deployments at several NHS sites and I look forward to hearing more on their success in the near future."

Jonathan Selby, UK & Ireland Country Manager at InterSystems, added: "We are proud of our work in achieving full compliance on so many of the ITK services bundles for Ensemble. These accreditations firmly establish InterSystems as the leading commercial force behind the ITK initiative and we are already working with several Trusts on deploying real-world implementations. Ensemble is fast becoming the de facto platform to seamlessly integrate new capability with existing systems based on the ITK industry standard."

InterSystems is already working on attaining the ITK 2.0 specifications with Ensemble. ITK 2.0 will provide standards for the transfer of all clinical correspondence within the NHS, including inpatient and outpatient letters, out-of-hours services and emergency department correspondence, and also Spine Mini Services with Personal Demographic Service bundles. Ensemble is well positioned to support ITK 2.0 as it fully supports the ebXML interactions required for integration with the national Spine and is already managing Kettering XML and CDA documents in Trust implementation. Also, InterSystems has prior experience of working with Partners to support PDS services, and is building an ITK standards-based Data Transfer service interface for Ensemble.

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About InterSystems
InterSystems Corporation is the worldwide leader in software for connected healthcare. With headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and offices in 23 countries, InterSystems provides advanced technologies for breakthrough applications.

InterSystems Ensemble® is a seamless platform for integration and the development of connectable applications. InterSystems TrakCare™ is a Web-based healthcare information system that rapidly delivers the benefits of an Electronic Patient Record. InterSystems HealthShare™ is a strategic platform for healthcare informatics, providing capabilities such as sharing of clinical information (including regional and national EHR solutions), comprehensive advanced analytics, building clinician and patient Web-based communities, and quickly filling informational and functional cross-system "gaps". InterSystems Caché® is a high performance object database that makes applications faster and more scalable. InterSystems DeepSee™ is software that makes it possible to embed real-time business intelligence capabilities in transactional applications.

For more information visit: InterSystems.co.uk.