What are advanced questionnaires?

PKB’s questionnaires feature is being updated to make it easier for clinical teams to gather information from their patients, including patients who have a PKB record but are not yet registered. The new questionnaires feature is coming soon.

The new questionnaires will have both an improved UI for patients completing the questionnaires and improved functionality for clinical teams to customise the questionnaires; such as calculated fields, questionnaire scoring, branching, and coded data.

Advanced questionnaire features

Scoring

Questionnaire scoring allows clinical teams to send scored questionnaires, such as the PHQ9, to patients. These scored questionnaires will apply simple calculations to patients' responses and generate an overall score, which can be viewed in the questionnaire response or retrieved via our APIs.

Branching

Organisations can configure sections of questionnaires to be displayed conditionally to patients, based on their answers to previous questions. For example, showing a set of pregnancy-related questions to a patient only after they had responded ‘Yes’ to a question asking if they are pregnant.

Coded data

Questions in Advanced Questionnaires can be mapped to clinical codes. For example, a question asking a patient for their blood pressure can be mapped to the clinical code for blood pressure.

When PKB creates the questionnaire template, we can add a clinical code for a question and/or a list of coded answer options. Organisations can then extract the relevant coded fields into their local systems via the FHIR R4 Questionnaire resource (see image above). The questionnaire questions are linked to the relevant responses in the QuestionnaireResponse resource via the ‘linkId’.

In a later development phase, PKB will map the coded data from questionnaires to other FHIR resources, e.g. measurements -> Observations resource. This would mean the measurements will be visible in the questionnaire response and also in the Measurements section of PKB.

Questionnaire scores can also be mapped to clinical codes where appropriate. For example, the score generated from a PHQ-9 depression questionnaire could be mapped to the SNOMED code for that score.

Mandatory questions

Organisations will be able to set individual questionnaire questions as mandatory, meaning the patient will not be able to submit the questionnaire if they are not complete. This will reduce time spent by clinical teams communicating with the patient if an important field is left unanswered. The patient will see an error message if they click Submit on a form with unanswered mandatory questions.

Drafts

Patients will be able to save their questionnaire in draft form and exit the questionnaire, before returning later and carrying on where they left off.

When a patient clicks ‘Save and close’ on a questionnaire, they will be directed back to the PKB home screen (if logged in) or the PKB login screen. Draft questionnaires will have an associated questionnaire response with a status of ‘In progress’.

When a patient returns to the questionnaire, they can continue completing the questionnaire and their previous responses will be saved. When the patient clicks ‘Submit’, the associated questionnaire response will have a status of ‘Completed’.

Images

Embedded images

Organisations will be able to embed images in questionnaires. Clinical teams can use images in questionnaires to guide the patient how to answer the questions and provide additional information and context to the questions.

Patient-uploaded images

Patients will be able to upload images in response to questions in questionnaires. This can be used by clinical teams, for example, when collecting information about the patient, where they can upload a photograph of themselves, or for uploading images related to their health such as injuries or skin rashes.

Sending questionnaires to unregistered patients

Clinical teams will be able to send questionnaires to patients that have not yet registered for PKB, as long as the patient has a PKB record with an email address and date of birth.

Unregistered patients will be sent an email explaining that they have been sent a questionnaire, which contains a link to the questionnaire. When they click on the link, they will be asked to provide their date of birth. This is to confirm they are the patient that the questionnaire has been sent to..

Once the date of birth check is complete, the patient is taken to the questionnaire.

When the patient clicks ‘Save and close’ or ‘Submit’, they are redirected to a confirmation page, with instructions about how to register.