COMPARE · ETRIAGE BESIDE WHAT YOU HAVE
Keep e-RS. Keep your EPR. Give consultants one screen.
Most Trusts we meet are weighing eTriage against something they already own, or something they’ve been offered. Here’s an honest view of each, built from their own published material, so your business case can stand on it.
E-RS ON ITS OWN
e-RS gets the request to you. The rest is still done by hand.
Every referral and Advice & Guidance request in England arrives through NHS e-RS, and it does that job well. Used on its own, though, the consultant reads the request in one window and the patient’s record in another, and someone keys the outcome into the PAS and the EPR afterwards.
E-RS GIVES YOU
- The national front door. GPs refer and ask for advice exactly as they do now.
- Referral Assessment Service and Advice & Guidance worklists, in the e-RS web application.
- Advice & Guidance converted to a referral, where the GP has allowed it.
ETRIAGE ADDS
- The request, its attachments and the patient’s record on one screen.
- Referrals, Advice & Guidance and consultant-to-consultant requests in one worklist, each locked to its reviewer so nothing is triaged twice.
- One action that updates e-RS, the EPR and the document store together, and clears the case from the worklist.
- Nothing changes for GPs. They keep working in e-RS; the difference is on your side.
YOUR EPR’S OWN SCREENS
If your EPR already does this well, use it.
Some EPRs take e-RS referrals into their own work queues. If yours gives consultants the whole case on one screen and writes every decision back, you may not need us. Most Trusts we talk to are still waiting on a supplier’s roadmap, or on a change request nobody has funded.
WORTH ASKING YOUR SUPPLIER
- Do referrals and Advice & Guidance land in the same work queue, attachments included?
- Can a consultant convert Advice & Guidance into a referral without leaving the EPR?
- Is the outcome written back to e-RS, or re-keyed?
- When could it be live in your Trust, and what does the change request cost?
ETRIAGE ADDS
- First specialties live within weeks of contract, without waiting on anyone’s roadmap.
- Your EPR’s interfaces wherever they exist, and its own screens where they don’t, under a service account with permissions you set.
- When the interface you wanted arrives, we move onto it and retire the workaround. Keeping it working through upgrades is covered by support.
THE FEDERATED DATA PLATFORM
The FDP helps you run the waiting list. eTriage decides what joins it.
NHS England’s Federated Data Platform sits on top of your existing systems and carries national products for waiting list validation, clinic and theatre scheduling, discharge and cancer. None of its published products triages referrals or answers Advice & Guidance, so the two sit side by side rather than in competition.
THE FDP GIVES YOU
- Waiting list validation, cohorting and data quality across the Trust.
- Clinic, room and theatre scheduling, discharge and cancer pathway products.
- Licences funded nationally for providers and ICBs.
ETRIAGE ADDS
- The decision at the front door: accept, return, ask for more, or convert Advice & Guidance into a referral.
- Fewer patients joining the list at all. Up to 49% of Advice & Guidance is resolved without a clinic visit.
- Every decision recorded once, at source, for whatever reads the list next.
ISLA
Isla is built around what patients send. eTriage is built around the consultant.
Isla collects photos, video, audio and forms from patients and clinicians, runs remote monitoring pathways, and takes referrals and Advice & Guidance from e-RS onto its own worklists. If patient-submitted images and monitoring are what you need most, it is built for that. eTriage is built for the other end of the request: the consultant’s worklist in secondary care, and every system that decision has to reach.
ISLA IS BUILT FOR
- Images, video and forms captured by patients and clinicians.
- Remote monitoring and surveillance pathways.
- Referrals and Advice & Guidance from e-RS, triaged on its worklists.
ETRIAGE IS BUILT FOR
- Referrals, Advice & Guidance and consultant-to-consultant requests in one secondary-care worklist.
- Advice & Guidance converted into an accepted referral, priority and clinic type set, in one action.
- e-RS, the EPR and the document store updated together, with nothing re-keyed.
- Hosting you choose: cloud, on-premise or sovereign UK infrastructure.
Each option is described from its own published material, checked on 10 November 2026: NHS England’s e-RS guidance for providers, NHS England’s Federated Data Platform pages and its Solution Exchange catalogue, and Isla’s website. Products change. If anything here is out of date, tell us at info@toca.health and we’ll put it right.
Weigh it on your own numbers.
We’ll model eTriage against your Trust’s published waiting list, specialty by specialty, beside whatever you’re comparing it with.