GPASS (General Practice Administration System for Scotland) was a GP IT system developed by the Scottish Government under Crown Copyright, and made available free of charge to Scottish GPs between 1984 and 2012.
Originally written in MS Basic, and running on an Apricot Xi under MS-DOS, it was significantly rewritten in C to run on Unix/Xenix, for multi-user use.
Software
Binaries: Possibly available Source code: Not available
Do you think anyone would still have source code or binaries for GPASS? We are keen to archive some of these things and possibly try ot get them running in some kind of webassembly virtualisation sandboxā¦
Somewhere ā¦.. I have a GPASS distro CD that had the API on it c 1998? Definitely not source code but it might have had the binary for the app somewhere. Iāll try to dig it out.
What are the expected capabilities of a GPAS in 2026? (or are they called practice management systems now?)
More specifically, what is the minimum that is needed for a GP practice.
Also what is desirable/ānice to haveā - but you donāt always get in modern GPAS ?
I suppose the answers depend on the type of practice - from small to large, rural/remote to city, and other dimentions.
(Please excuse my ignorance - most of my work has been acute hospital systems )
It an interesting topic @stephen but can you ask again in a different channel, as I donāt think we want to mess up this topic which is specific to GPASS
I didnāt do it to a new topic because I thought GPASfS may have potential for revival as an OSS project? On that basis I felt it would be good to know the gap between GPASfS as-is and what is the minimum viable GP admin system in 2026.
If GPASfS is only of historical interest perhaps an admin can move my comment to a new topic? (this is a discourse platform feature available to admins)
GPASS never was an open-source project (should have been) and is aboslutely only of historical interest. However, your question is very good one going forward āWhat should a GP system cover in 2026āā?
Iāve started a stub that collates the āHistorical Requirements Of A GP Systemā information we have
This is a separate wiki I guess, but definitely instructive to see what existing requirements were, and also how they have changed over time, as the market has become more driven by governmental priorities and less by clinical ones.
But itās joint workflow between social providers, community and social care - often working on one care pathway e.g. diabetes prevention and management.
Itās often simplified in GP systems, for example the social providers referral (maybe known as exercise referral or GP Referral), is really a series of two way communications (such as updates to patient weight, exercise activity, updating care plan, etc).
Itās not clinically validated but know itās roughly true as I witnessed several health providers following this on my dads falls+cancer pathways. It was a nurse practitioner that took over management of the pathway.
This was mostly verbal - the NHS Trust data was absent, only one provider was electronic (and could see GP record).
In 1990 there was an effort to import GPASS into England as a GP system (we had a demo not improved by the demonstrator having been selling cars before inadequate training - & unable to answer key questions not in script).
The 1990 Kenneth Clarke new GMS contract introduced (among other things) targets, replacing previous IOS (item of service) payments: instead of getting paid per immunisation, you only got paid if immunising 70% - or higher rate 90% - or your eligible registered population - leading to a need to know the registered population & those not immunised. In addition, for the first time, computers were 50% funded (out of existing budget for staff and premises) - if they were RFA (Requirement For Accreditation) compliant - updated regularly.
Targets increased the number of computerised practices - and the power of DH over the suppliers and GPs.
