Digitising Data Transfer

Owned by Claire McCready (Unlicensed)
Last updated: 30-09-2022
3 min read
ID

RM143

Version1.0.1
TypeRoadmap Item
Frameworks

  • GP IT Futures

  • Tech Innovation

  • DFOCVC

  • Vaccinations - Local/PCN Delivery


Title

Digitising Data Transfer

Description

Introduce a requirement to the Data Migration standard mandating the use of the most appropriate mechanism for transferring patient data

Date Added

 

Standards and Capabilities

Data Migration

Change Route

Managed Capacity - Minor/Patch uplifts

Change Type

Uplift

Status

Closed

Publication Date 
Effective Date

 

Incentives / Funding

No

Incentive Dates

N/A


Background

An estimated 94% of all Practice migrations, also known as Practice clinical system supplier switches, rely on the transportation of a physical hard drive by courier to transfer Patient data to the target supplier. The physical transfer of data in a Practice migration has the potential to create difficulties for cloud based new market entrants that become Foundation suppliers in future as they would have to perform additional steps in their process to extract data from a hard drive to move it to their cloud-based storage solution, e.g., AWS or Azure. This process typically takes 5 working days to move Patient data to the target supplier. During this time any new information entered onto the outgoing system will not be migrated into the new system and must be manually entered into the new system once it’s operationally live.


Outline Plan

All Foundation suppliers must be fully compliant against this specification by the effective date.

If a supplier believes that they do not need to meet any of the requirements within this specification, within the requested time-period, then evidence must be provided to the Practice Migration Programme which demonstrates why this is the case. It will then be reviewed by the programme and a response will be provided back to the supplier.


Summary of Change

A requirement will be added to the Data Migration Standard that mandates the most appropriate mechanism for the migration of Patient data should be taken for all migrations, whether that is internet-based or physical.

Addition to Data Migration Standard for both source and target suppliers: 

Requirement IDRequirement TextApplies ToLevel

DMI27

Perform a migration of data from a source supplier to target supplier over the internet.

  • Internet-based transfers must conform to the Cross Functional Requirements outlined within the DMS Data Transfer-Cross Functional Requirements
  • If, under the circumstance that a bandwidth of >= 70 Mbps and a latency of <200ms cannot be achieved, then a fall back to physical media transfer can be used.
  • If, under the circumstance that physical media is deemed necessary, and the target supplier is primarily cloud-based, then a solution supported by the target supplier’s cloud provider must be used, for example AWS Snow Cone or Azure Data Box.
  • If, under the circumstance that both suppliers are primarily cloud-based, then an internet-based transfer must be used. This is due to the potential number of additional transfers steps when using physical media between two alternative cloud providers.
AllMUST


Full Specification

 GP Data Migration Standards


Assurance Approach

  • Source supplier to demonstrate to the target supplier that a test data extract can be successfully sent via the internet
  • Target suppliers to verify on receipt that the file(s) checksums correspond
  • All suppliers to provide an updated Data Migration Approach to GPITF which outlines how this requirement will be met
  • If applicable, all suppliers to provide an updated Documented Data Extract (DDE) to GPITF 
  • All suppliers to provide an updated compliance traceability matrix (TM) with their compliance statement summarising of how this requirement has been met, to GPITF. The Supplier’s existing compliance TM submission with this new requirement added, will be shared for the supplier to then complete and re-submit.