David Simpson, product director, reflects on the evolution of NED. MEDILOGIK’s commitment to meeting its requirements means that 75% of the procedures being uploaded to the latest version are being made by MEDILOGIK EMS™ customers. But further iteration will be needed if NED is going to deliver the benefits promised.
It’s a year since NHS England’s deadline for all trusts to submit data to the latest iteration of the National Endoscopy Database came into effect.
Of the 870,753 procedures that were uploaded to what is known as NEDi2.1 in the six months to December last year, some 519,430 were uploaded through MEDILOGIK EMS™. That means 75% of the procedures uploaded were uploaded through our endoscopy management system. In the first quarter of 2025 this has increased to 78%
If you’re looking to procure a NEDi2.1 compliant system, then you can be confident that MEDILOGIK EMS™ doesn’t just fit the bill but is the market leader.
MEDILOGIK are committed to continuing to evolve our system to comply with new NED requirements, which we think are needed to deliver some of the benefits that were promised for trusts and endoscopy services.
The history of an idea and its implementation
The idea that trainees should be able to automatically upload records to the JAG Endoscopy Training System (JETS) was first proposed by Dr Paul Dunckley at the British Society of Gastroenterology Conference in 2010. Paul recognised the time wasted by trainees re-keying data and had the vision to appreciate the huge improvement in the quality of data in JETS if it was coming direct from the reporting system.
This morphed into a bigger project to create the NED as a ‘big data’ store to support research into endoscopy screening programmes and the accreditation of endoscopy units. Initially, trusts faced challenges in obtaining the necessary Caldicott approval for the project and for suppliers to amend their systems to create and export the data set required.
MEDILOGIK worked with NHS Highland and Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, where Dr Dunckley now leads the Training Academy, to validate and update the relevant data. MEDILOGIK EMS™ was awarded NED1 LIVE compliance at BSG 2019 – the only supplier to gain NED1 LIVE compliance.
In the meantime, a consultation had been launched on NED2. This made substantial changes to the dataset collected, including FIT data for patients with suspected colorectal cancer.
We continued to support the NED1 LIVE upload, while creating and testing the new dataset, working with Gloucestershire. Jim Docherty, a colorectal surgeon at NHS Highland, who spent a number of years on the NED committee, joined MEDILOGIK on his retirement and was heavily involved assisting Gloucester during the testing phase.
MEDILOGIK EMS™ was awarded NEDi2.1 compliance at the end of October 2023. After that, we were able to migrate all our customers over to NEDi2.1; a process that was made much easier thanks to our Microsoft Azure Cloud Platform.
Action needed to drive uptake
The effort devoted to the NED project by MEDILOGIK’s development and quality assurance teams, and by our customers, has been substantial. So, we’re keen to see it deliver.
As things stand, the biggest beneficiaries are trainees as their JETS portfolio is updated as soon as the procedures are uploaded into NED.
Commissioners, health boards and trusts have seen fewer benefits. The NED dataset isn’t comprehensive enough to support all national audit requirements – and endoscopy units can access more of their own data through our reporting tools than they can through NED.
NED needs more trusts to support uploads to the latest version. The NED committee has no power to require endoscopy units to upload data based on its requirements, and NHS England set its NEDi2.1 deadline without the power to enforce it.
The JAG has not followed through on its stated requirement for trusts to be uploading to NED to secure JAG accreditation. As far as we can tell, around 50% of trusts are not supporting NEDi2.1, based on the December 2024 figures. More action from JAG could move the dial.
NED3: or a more agile approach?
The NED also needs a more complete dataset. There has been discussion about enhancing the current limited dataset for Enteroscopy, ERCP and EUS to enable more meaningful analysis to be undertaken. As things stand, adding this new data would require another iteration of NED, which would take us to NED3.
However, to keep up to date with developments within the speciality, the dataset needs to be more agile. That way, it will be able to meet the needs of the service without the need for periodic consultations.
Of course, suppliers would have to become more agile as well, to deliver more frequent iterations of their systems. As the project’s most committed supplier, MEDILOGIK is up for that challenge. We have the development teams and cloud-based platform to do it: but we do need the market and national projects to back us.
We’re also aware of an eagerness among some users for NED to capture patient identifiable data, with appropriate information governance agreement. This would allow NED to be linked to national datasets such as the cancer registries and Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) data. This would enable very important national data analysis to be undertaken around the quality and quantity of endoscopy plus support national audits for PCCRC and PEUGIC.
Here for the future
In the meantime, significant progress has been made. All MEDILOGIK EMS™ users in the UK have been uploading to NEDi2.1 for 12 months (or more) and in March 2025 we contributed 99,500 records.
Those MEDILOGIK EMS™ customers are delivering a big benefit to their trainees and, even as things stand, get a ‘tick in the box’ when it comes to JAG accreditation. Those benefits come on top of being able to use a modern, cloud-based system that is dedicated to supporting endoscopy.
MEDILOGIK EMS™ can be integrated with vetting, booking and scheduling tools to help you stratify and manage waiting lists. Its graphical interface enables the endoscopist to easily capture images and record procedures, thus ensuring digital copies reach referring clinicians and primary care in a matter of minutes.
MEDILOGIK EMS™ is also a living system. We aim for six upgrades per year. So, as NED evolves and, hopefully, becomes more comprehensive and extensive, we’re ready to evolve with it and to help endoscopy services secure the benefits set out in the original vision.
