New features

1. NHS App Notifications & Messages about appointments

PKB will send Notifications & Messages (N&M) in the NHS App for appointment activity, this will include sending an NHS App message and an associated native Apple or Android push notification.  We are trialling N&M with a single trust in December 2024 and other trusts live with the Wayfinder programme can choose to switch on the feature in January 2025.  

The actions that will trigger NHS App N&M, are: 

• A new appointment in the patient’s record 

• An update to an existing appointment in the patient’s record 

• An appointment cancellation 

We will expand to other events such as appointment reminders,  documents and questionnaire notifications in the future.

User Journey

• Patients will receive a message in their NHS App message inbox alongside an associated push notification. 

• Clicking on the push notification will take the patient through the authentication process to open the NHS app and then go straight to the message in the NHS App Messaging inbox. 

• The message will contain a summary of the appointment update and a link to view the appointment. 

• Clicking on the link will take the user to the PKB ‘View appointment’ page.

Email notification fallback

To ensure patients are contacted promptly about appointment updates whilst preventing notification overwhelm, we include the following rules when sending NHS App N&M notifications:

• If the message sent to the NHS App is read within 4 hours of sending, patients will NOT be sent an email notification

• We will send an email if:

  • we receive a ‘rejected’ or ‘un-notified’ status 

  • we don’t receive a ‘notified’ status within 1 hour

  • if the NHS App message has not been opened within 4 hours

You can read more about our NHS App integration here.

Bug fixes

1. Consultation answers no longer appear pre-filled

We have resolved an issue that was causing patients to see their previous answers pre-filled after clicking ‘Start consultation’. This issue is now resolved, meaning patients will never see pre-filled answers when starting a consultation.

2. Error on Profile page

We have resolved an issue that caused patients to encounter an error page when accessing the Profile page via a link in their email notifications. Patients can now successfully log in and view their Profile page without any errors.

3. Error managing files in the team library

Some coordinators were unable to add, edit or delete files from their team library. This issue has now been resolved and files can be managed in the library as normal.