Thurs 15th Dec 2022

Feature updates

1. Updated text for delayed results

We have changed the text displayed to patients when a delay is applied to both Pathology and Radiology results to avoid patients becoming unnecessarily concerned that the information is being held back because it is bad news.

1. Carers can no longer add additional carers

Carers will not be able to add other carers to a patient’s record. Only patients, professionals and coordinators will be able to do so. This is to ensure that the clinical team can follow relevant safeguarding procedures for patients who lack capacity. To read more about this change, read our October blog.

1. Additional link to appointment change requests

Users are shown a confirmation message when they send a request to reschedule or cancel an appointment. We have added a link to the request within the confirmation message for ease of access.

1. Updates to messaging threads

Our messaging threads have been updated further, we have:

• Changed the message background colour to make the message and text stand out further.

• Changed the style of the attachment button to align with latest designs

• Implemented a show more/show less button below the participants of a message when the list goes over a single line.

• Ensured the page meets Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

1. Updates to alerts

We have changed the styling of our alerts to align with latest styling guidelines. We have also added an icon to dismiss the alert.

1. GET /v1/users/self/patients - registration status

The GET /v1/users/self/patients endpoint can now be filtered to return only registered patients using the ‘registeredOnly’ parameter.

1. FHIR API - Send questionnaire request

We will now return a warning message where an organisation tries to send a questionnaire to a patient who does not belong to the clinical team that owns the questionnaire. The message is: 'Request to patient <UUID> was not created; patient cannot access the requested Questionnaire'.

You can read the full API specification for in our developer wiki, including example requests.

Technical improvements

1. Email confirmation

When adding a new email address to a patient record, the link within confirmation email has now been updated to use a UUID (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universally_unique_identifier ) for the user ID rather than a more guessable number ID.

Bugs

1. Document reminder emails

We have resolved an issue where document reminder emails were being sent without the custom footer of the sending organisation. The emails will now be sent with the custom footer. For more information on email notifications please see https://manual.patientsknowbest.com/patient/email-notifications#h.p_b03_0gMGoqvJ.

1. Proprietary SSO

When an NHS number that belongs to a patient who does not have a PKB record is used in an SSO URL, professionals were taken to the patient record they most recently viewed via SSO. We have resolved the issue so that the professional will now be shown an error message

1. HL7 Medicines

HL7 messages containing Medicines were silently failing when the message contained two medicine segments with the same start date but different end dates if the patient had received a message containing a different medicine substance previously. We have resolved the issue, so these Medicine updates do not silently fail and the patient’s Medicine list is updated.

1. NHS App - Sub-menu alignment

We have fixed a minor alignment issue for the sub-menus accessed from the ‘Test results & Imaging’ and ‘Track your health’ buttons in the NHS App .

Mon 28th Nov 2022

Feature updates

1. FHIR API - Send questionnaire request

Organisations can trigger a consultation to be sent to patients using our new FHIR send-questionnaire-request operation. Consultations can be sent to a single patient or a group of patients within the same team on PKB.

This release allows organisations to send consultations to all patients in any of their teams. There is no longer a restriction on the number of patients who can be sent consultations.

You can read the full specification in our developer wiki, including example requests.

Bugs

1. FHIR API - patient demographics

Patients were being created with the word ‘null’ in their given name when the sending organisation used ““ to represent no middle name. We have resolved the issue so that the ““ is ignored and the name is created as intended, without the word ‘null’.

Thurs 24th Nov 2022

Feature updates

1. FHIR API - send questionnaire request

Organisations can trigger a consultation to be sent to patients using our new FHIR send-questionnaire-request operation. Consultations can be sent to a single patient or a group of patients within the same team on PKB.

This initial release allows organisations to send consultations to up to 32 patients at once. When sending to all patients in a team, the team can have at most 32 patients. We will increase the maximum number of patients in a subsequent release.

Next, we are extending this operation to accept NHS number as an optional parameter.

You can read the full specification in our developer wiki, including example requests. Speak to your PKB project manager if you are interested in using this API.

Thurs 17th Nov 2022

Feature updates

1. New library title and empty folder information message added

A new title, ‘Shared health links' have been added to the library section;

and the following message will be displayed when a user clicks into an empty folder; 'This folder is empty’.

1. Proprietary single sign-on: Patient summary page will show for patient’s outside organisation

If a professional accesses the record of a patient that is in their organisation but not in their team via single sign-on, they will now land directly on the patient summary page with access to data from their team. This is in line with the existing UI behaviour. Previously, the professional would land on the ask-for-access screens in this scenario.

1. Updated styling of hyperlink from NHS App

We have updated the styling of the hyperlink for ‘Back to my appointments’ when accessed from the NHS App ‘Wayfinder’ screens to match the NHS styling.

Bugs

1. Care plans

Free text fields in care plans remained editable when certain characters were used, even after being saved. This was a problem, as it meant all of the text in the box was not always visible when viewing in print mode.

We have now resolved the issue, so the free text fields do not remain editable.

Thurs 10th Nov 2022

Feature updates

1. Appointment messaging

We have made minor changes to the text layout on the appointment messaging screens to improve usability.

1. New consultations service warning

We have added a new warning message for the unlikely event of the consultations service being unavailable, which says ‘There was an error accessing consultations, please try again later.'

1. Consultation messaging

Patients will no longer be able to send a message about consultations if the professional in the message thread has messaging turned off. This will prevent patients from sending follow-up messages when the professional is not expecting to receive them.

Bugs

1. Professionals - patient timeline

The patient timeline was failing to load if the patient had an HL7 encounter which included multiple locations, two or more of which were the same. This bug has now been fixed and the timeline loads as expected.

Tues 7th Nov 2022

Technical improvements

1. This release contains a number of background updates that will not change the user experience for patients or professionals.

Wed 2nd Nov 2022

Bug fixes

Coordinators - email notifications

1. PKB sent coordinators an inaccurate email notification when a patient registered after October 20th using an email invitation link sent to them before 1st August 2022. The email notification said that the patient accepted the coordinator’s ask for access request. This bug did not affect coordinators access to patient records, it was an email notification error only.

Wed 26th Oct 2022

Bugs

1. HL7 plans - email notifications

We now send email notifications every time an organisation adds or updates a plan via our HL7 API. Previously, we limited email notifications about plans to one a day when an organisation sent them via our HL7 API. The behaviour is now consistent with our behaviour when users add or update plans via our user interface. For more information please see patient email notifications.

Wed 19th Oct 2022

Bugs

1. HL7

We have resolved an issue where an ‘AE’ (error) message was returned when customers sent an invalid HL7 message type. We will now return the correct acknowledgement code, 'AR' (rejected), which contains details of the validation error. More information on acknowledgement messages and codes please see Acknowledgement ACK examples.

1. Carers

We have resolved an issue which prevented unregistered PKB users from being added as carers. The ‘Add Carer' button now works as expected and the unregistered patient is added as a carer. For more information please see How can I add a carer to a patient record?

1. Carers

Coordinators unable to transfer patient's email address to their carer

We have resolved an issue for coordinators who are transferring an existing patient email address to their carer using the ‘Use Email for Carer’ feature. For more information on this please see How can I add a carer to a patient record?

Wed 12th Oct 2022

Technical improvements

1. Plans

We have optimised the performance of the ‘Plans’ page so that the list of plans loads quickly, even when a patient has a large number of plans in their record.

Wed 5th Oct 2022

Bugs

1. Library

We have fixed a navigation issue for patients accessing PKB from the NHS App. Prior to the fix, patients who used the back button twice from within a folder on the PKB library page, were returned to the NHS App ‘Your Health’ menu, now they will be returned to the appointment they came from.

1. Appointment

We have fixed a navigation issue for both professionals and patients when using the ellipsis to amend details of an appointment on the ‘View Appointment’ page. Prior to the fix, patients or professionals who used the ellipsis were returned to the main ‘Appointments’ page, now they are returned to the ‘View Appointment’ page of the appointment they came from.

Technical improvements

1. Trusts can now send repeated medicines into PKB with the same start date and different end dates via HL7. We will no longer reject HL7 messages if they contain two ZRX segments with the same medicine substance and start date, but will instead only reject where there are two ZRX segments with the same medication substance, start date and end date. For more information on sending medicines via HL7 please see

ADT A28.

Wed 28th Sep 2022

Technical improvements

1. Appointment management

When an organisation sends a link via an HL7 SIU appointment message to allow a patient to manage a new or existing appointment from an external appointment booking system we will now automatically correct the link if it does not include a scheme (which defines the type of internet service (most commonly http or https)). The link can be specified in the ZAP segment of the HL7 SIU appointment message, for more information please see new appointments SIU S12 and updates to existing appointments SIU S14.

Feature updates

1. NHS App footer

We have updated the behaviour of the links shown in the footer that is displayed to users accessing PKB from within the NHS App so that they open in a new tab.

For full history please see pkbstatus.com history