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Introduction

This roadmap supports our 2020-2023 product strategy. Our roadmap It is reviewed updated monthly so that we can make sure we’re always we are building the right features for our users and customer organisationscustomers.

The roadmap is divided into the work that our development teams are currently working on and the work that scheduled to begin once the current projects have been completed. This is a living roadmap and will be updated when we have new plans to share.

Our prioritisation is guided by feedbackfrom our customers. We also conduct user-research with our patient and professional users in order to continuously improve our platform for our userspatients and healthcare professionals and collate feedback that customers give our staff.

Subscribe to our blog to receive updates on what’s being released each month, including minor changes that are not on this roadmap. Thefeature category of the PKB blog has details on the features we're releasing.Now contains all our development blog posts..

Current projects

Integrations

FHIR API

EMIS extract service

User-interface changes

Appointments

Next

Integrations

HL7 API

User-interface changes

Accessibility

Now

Our development teams are currently working on the following functionality.

Integrations

FHIR API

Clinical data

We are working on a set of FHIR resources for clinical data. Healthcare organisations will be able to send and pull data for their patients from PKB. We have published a separate FHIR roadmap for this work.

Send questionnaires

Customers will be able to trigger PKB questionnaires to be sent from an external system. The draft spec for this API has been publishedWe created PKB to allow data to move from wherever it is to wherever it is needed whenever the patient wants it. Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) is the global industry standard for passing healthcare data between systems. We are ensuring that our information model and APIs meet this standard so they can be used to transfer data quickly and easily, no matter what the care setting is. In 2022 and early 2023, we are dedicating most of our development time to this project.

The benefits of this work include:

• satisfying our customers’ need to transfer data in FHIR format

• making it easier for third-party development teams and organisations to build applications using data stored in records

• making our codebase easier to work with so that our developers can develop new features more efficiently

This project has multiple stages:

1. Providing FHIR endpoints to allow organisations’ data to be sent to patient records and read back in STU3 or R4 versions of FHIR 

2. Mapping existing data in records to the FHIR data model and migrating data from our existing database to a FHIR database

3. Aggregating data from different sources into an aggregated FHIR database (as data will continue to be sent in different formats from different sources)

4. Providing a read only FHIR endpoint for customers to pull data from the aggregated database

5. Linking our web application to the aggregated database so that users can see this data in records

6. Ensuring that our regular functionality is in place for data received via our FHIR endpoint, e.g. sending email notifications about new data, privacy labels, registration invitations 

Steps 2 - 5 are being completed one dataset at a time, starting with appointments.

FHIR endpoints to read/write data organisations’ data : RELEASED

Organisations can now send clinical data using our FHIR endpoint in either STU3 or R4 versions of FHIR. Each organisation writes to an isolated FHIR store. They can also retrieve their data from this FHIR store. 

We decided to support both FHIR STU3 and R4 because some customers in England and the Netherlands are still on STU3, while many app developers prefer R4 and the US government has mandated R4. Our intention is that each customer can send data in the FHIR version they like. We support this by separating transmission and storage of data from processing and aggregation. This strategy eases integration, as customers with an existing body of data in FHIR format can replicate that into PKB without filtering or transforming it. 

Organisations can use PKB as an integration engine for data sets that are not yet displayed on PKB’s UI.

Moving appointments to an aggregated FHIR store : RELEASED

We are aggregating data from the isolated FHIR stores into a view of the patient’s whole record — this will be exposed as a read-only FHIR API and linked to our web application.

Appointments are now available in our aggregated FHIR database. This is true for appointments that have been sent to records by any source and by any route, e.g. our FHIR API, our HL7 API, our web application.

We expected the mapping, migration and aggregation of appointments to be a learning exercise because it is the first dataset we are aggregating. We now know what’s needed to repeat this process for other datasets more efficiently. 

Making appointments available via a FHIR API and in our web application: IN PROGRESS

We are integrating a read only R4 endpoint so that the aggregated appointment data can be pulled from patient records in FHIR R4 format and linking our web application to the aggregated database so that patients can see the appointments in their records. We hope to complete this for appointments in November. 

This work includes putting access rules in place so that our existing consent model applies and making sure we can notify patients about new data in their records via email notifications.

When this stage is complete, we’ll know how to repeat the process for other data sets and so can parallelise this work across more developers. 

Conditions, medications, observations: IN PROGRESS 

Each data set will be mapped, migrated, aggregated and made available via the read-only FHIR API and our web application.  We are prioritising the data sets from London’s Discovery Data Service as this will provide the GP and community records to patients treated in London starting with conditions, medications and observations.

We’ll be working on these data sets from October 2022. 

Next steps

The remaining data types will be sequenced depending on customers’ abilities – as usual, we prioritise releasing the most data to the most patients.

Send Questionnaires: IN PROGRESS

In November 2022, we’ll have a FHIR API endpoint for sending questionnaires. This API allows an organisation to tell PKB to send out a questionnaire to a patient. This is great for Patient-Initiated Follow-Up (PIFU) and pre assessment/triage workflows. 

In 2020, PKB made questionnaire responses available via our FHIR API. Nottinghamshire’s GPs, for example, pull the answers automatically to store them in SystmOne for local audit trails alongside PKB’s centralised audit trail.

EMIS extract service

Measurements and Tests: IN PROGRESS

We are now adding Physical add NHS Health Check measurements , recorded at GP practices using the EMIS medical records system to patients’ PKB records. records. Thelist of measurements includes measurements such as BMI, blood pressure, and pulse. In November, we’ll start processing NHS Health Checks test results. 

This is part of our EMIS Extract service integration being developed in partnership with North East London CCG, as part of their award-winning digital platform for mental health recovery.

The list of measurements is in our user manual. It includes measurements such as BMI, blood pressure, and pulse. The measurements included are part of the NHS Health Checks, and are important health data to support someone to set recovery goals to improve their physical and mental health and wellbeing.

We are now working on adding test results from the NHS Health Checks.

User-interface changes

Appointments

We are refreshing the  

Performance improvements: IN PROGRESS

In early 2022, EMIS updated their Extract Service so we migrated from the legacy Extract Service to their new platform. As part of this migration, we have improved the performance of our data processing so that we can add data to records quickly. We’ll monitor the performance when we start processing NHS Health Check tests. 

Web application changes

Appointments 

Appointment management: RELEASED

Organisations can authorise third-party partners to send a link in a HL7 SIU appointment message, which will allow their patients to change or cancel their appointments via that partner.  

Patients see a ‘Manage’ option on their appointment which takes them to their organisation’s partner booking system to make changes. Once the patient is done, they can return to their record. When the appointment is updated by the organisation, this will also be updated within PKB

This feature will be available for users once a customer’s preferred appointment management partner has completed their components of the integration. This work has been assessed and is being scheduled by a number of partners. Please contact your preferred appointment management partner and Patients Know Best will be happy to talk them through the newly available APIs to enable this workflow.

Appointment change requests: RELEASED

Patients can now request to cancel or change their appointments from their record using appointment messaging. This is a feature that is configurable and can be switched on and off at an Organisation level.

On the ‘View appointment’ page, patients select ‘Request change’ or ‘Request cancellation’. When they do this, a message will be sent to the responsible team (nominated by the organisation), who can review their request and make the change on their internal system. The updated appointment details will then be visible in the patient’s record. 

Appointments UI and accessibility improvements: RELEASED

We have refreshed the ‘View appointment’ page. The new page will:Highlight

• Highlights important details like location, date and time.

• Link Links to other information to help patients prepare for and get the most out of their appointments, for example symptom tracking or care plans.

• Meet Meets Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. You can read more about our work on accessibility in our latest this blog post.

• Have Has a clear layout for all screen sizes.

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Next

This section lists the next work-streams that our developers will focus on.

Integrations

HL7 API

Appointment management

Patients will be able to manage their appointments in appointment booking systems from their PKB record, e.g. cancel, reschedule. The HL7 specification for this will be published soon.

User-interface changes

Accessibility

Messages

Messaging user experience and accessibility: IN PROGRESS

We have improved messaging to make it easier and more intuitive to use. The changes are:

• The look and feel is similar to other messaging applications, such as WhatsApp and Messenger.

• The page looks great on all screen sizes. 

• The page meets the accessibility standards set out in Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA. 

• The message subject is now at the top of the page for clarity.

• There is an ‘Options’ button with available actions for the user. For example, adding additional users to the conversation or handing over the conversation to another clinician. 

We’re currently applying these changes for consultations.

Next projects

Integrations

Remove from teams via HL7 API

It is possible to add patients to teams via our HL7 API. Next, we want to give customers a way to remove patients from teams. We have published the draft specification for this API for feedback. 

Web application changes

Restrict single sign-on access to one record at a time

PKB has proprietary APIs that organisations can use to provide single sign-on from their local systems to PKB. We will allow organisations accessing PKB to restrict the view to one record at a time. This means that when a clinician opens a patient’s PKB record from their local system the buttons to navigate away from that record will not be available.

Future projects

These are projects that we’re currently scoping with customers and hope to schedule in 2023.

Integrations

GP data from EMIS ES and TPP SystmOne

We are currently reviewing options for making GP data available for more patients. This data would be added for patients once their record has been created so that as soon as they register they can see it in their record. 

NHS App Wales

PKB will be available for NHS App users in Wales, where an organisation has chosen to offer PKB to their patients. 

Web application changes

Accessibility: Website navigation

PKB is committed to meeting WCAG standards. The first changes we will make will be to the navigation bar of the patient view. Our Accessibility Statement has been published in our user manual. We’ve been testing our designs with users to make sure that it’s intuitive and easy-to-use.

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Questionnaire scoring 

We will allow organisations to add calculations to their questionnaires so that they can score patient’s responses in PKB. We’ve been compiling the requirements and reviewing the requests that we’ve received from customers for this feature. Once we have confirmed the specification, this will be scheduled.

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