Working closely with Hospital Trusts across the UK to develop the system, PCTI has run several pilots in a drive to improve patient communications between hospitals and GPs.
Stockport NHS Foundation Trust and two GP practices in the north-west are among those who have tested the web-based document delivery system which will speed up the delivery and collection of letters from consultants to GPs, cutting the time that patients wait for hospital correspondence.
The Trust currently produces 40,000 documents a month relating to patients. In the past these would have been posted out to GPs.
However, with EDT the letters are typed and saved by hospital secretaries and clinicians then released for overnight delivery.
PCTI director Philip Young said: "When the practice retrieves its documents, the system automatically identifies and distributes them for filing into the patient's clinical record. They can then be sent to everyone who needs to see them, like the GP, and practice nurse for instance.
There have been other trials around the country which simply provide documents to practices via email. Whilst this is clearly an improvement on post and paper, the impact on the practice is limited because they need to manually process each one in turn. Our solution concentrates on saving practice administrative time by automating the entire capture and data entry process.
One of the GP practices involved in the pilot scheme with Stepping Hill Hospital is the 11,000 patient Sett Valley Medical Centre, in Newmills, Derbyshire. Practice manager, Mrs Angela Wales, said that the practice had introduced PCTI's document management system two years ago and EDT was the next step in improving their service to patients.
"It has revolutionised the way we work," she said. ""Previously we had to scan all incoming mail and manually file it onto our computerised system. Then we had to make sure that all the relevant people received copies. Now because of electronic delivery and automatic identification, much of this is done for us saving hours of work per day."
"This means that one of our patients could be seen at Stockport NHS Foundation Trust in the afternoon, return to us for a follow-up appointment the next morning and we would have all their up-to-date notes. Not only are patient treatment times speeded up, but also the amount of time they have to worry while waiting for results is reduced."
PCTI, based in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, has a portfolio of document management products aimed specifically at general practice, with installations at more than 2000 sites throughout the UK.