Product Roadmap Q&As

Owned by Mohammad Al-Ubaydli
Oct 22, 2022
4 min read

There were a number of questions put to our Product Team on the day of the PUG which, due to time restraints, were not responded to. You can find the full Q&A details below :

Question: Can the Red Book or growth charts be incorporated in PKB for parents to keep an eye on?

Response: PKB has functionality for growth charts for under 18’s - ​​https://manual.patientsknowbest.com/professional/paediatric-records#h.p_pHe-Tu16tj0B

Question: Do many other countries have their own version of a centralised health app (i.e. NHS App) for their respective systems?

Response: Answered in the video on the PUG page.

Question: If you (a patient) used PKB for physio under different email to current NHS login, can the 2 logins be merged?

Response: If a patient has two separate records, unfortunately we can’t merge the records but record merging is something we would like to explore in the future.

Question: Where is the integration with TPP please within the roadmap?

Response:

  1. We have SSO from TPP already working PKB Manual - SystmOne single sign-on

  2. A number of our customers (like Nottinghamshire) are using PKB APIs to flow data into PKB from TPP and from TPP into PKB, however direct integration is not yet available.

  3. Expansion beyond capabilities available in point B is not currently on our roadmap. EMIS has a partner programme, TPP did not when we did the integration. We do agree TPP integration is useful; it is just later in prioritisation and funding from the overall PKB customer base. We would be happy to partner on bids to finance accelerating tighter TPP integration.

Question: How about Carenotes and RIO integrations?

Response: PKB open APIs can be used to send data from any source system (where that system/network) has the capability. Likewise, data can be retrieved from PKB using outbound APIs.

In reference to these two particular systems:

We have customers sending care plans to PKB from CareNotes and also tested and planning to extract completed questionnaires for storage back in CareNotes.

Customers have already enabled Single Sign On from RiO utilising their TIE and the PKB APIs to support this. Customers have also used their TIE to share data with patients in PKB from their RiO system also utilising the PKB APIs. These are both live and in use.

Question: Is there any information on the timeline for questionnaire functionality for conditional logic and data entry validation please?

Response: We are now working on a FHIR API for the questionnaire itself. The API allows an organisation to tell PKB to send out a questionnaire to a patient. This is great for Patient-Initiated Follow-Up (PIFU). Sending out questionnaires for a patient to answer before an appointment allows identifying unnecessary appointments, and preparing better for necessary appointments. Sending out questionnaires after an appointment allows identifying patients who do need a follow-up and freeing up slots from those who do not.

Ultimately, PKB can support the following functionality in questionnaires:

  1. Calculations: formulae that use the answers of different parts of the questionnaire to show a score.

  2. Charting: showing different answers to the same questions over time in a patient’s record.

  3. Analytics: showing patterns in the answers of all patients to the same questions.

These are not scheduled on the short to medium term roadmap as we are prioritising other prerequisites to questionnaire workflows noted above. Once current work on questionnaires is complete, or is nearing completion, we will scope the next set of developments.

Features that are not appropriate for our roadmap:

  • Scheduling: other systems have the information that triggers the schedule. For example the appointment booking system that knows the date of the appointment and the preferences of the team booking the appointment.

  • Decisions: interpreting and acting on the answers and scores of the patient is complex and specialised. Each pathway will have different rules for a small number of patients. Over time, new systems are evolving to manage these pathways. These had been limited in the past by the difficulty and expense of aggregating data and engaging patients, which PKB now takes care of.

Question: For care plans, some providers have a large number (200+) of these - how can these be accommodated in on boarding?

Response: PKB have an API that allows for providers to send in (non-editable) care plans to PKB records

In terms of care plans hosted in PKB we will work with you during onboarding to rationalise and prioritise creation of care plans and decide over time which care plans it would be more appropriate to host within PKB, so that these an be edited, updated and actioned by a patient and their carers directly. We will continue to provide this support throughout the lifetime of the contract.

Question: We are always being asked about scheduling so we can send out care plans and questionnaires at regular intervals without intervention from co-ordinators. Is this something PKB are looking at?

Response: This will be possible using the FHIR API, but the trigger for the event will need to come from the sender (ie the hospital will need to programme when these should be sent out, whether it’s following a particular event such as an operation or just to be sent quarterly). The first customers looking to utilise this API are planning on building this logic into their TIE, will then both prompt the sending of questionnaires based on an event/cohort or time sequence, and also be able to extract the completed response to write back into their EPR (in this instance Cerner and RiO).