Somerset Cancer Register and PKB

Owned by Mohammad Al-Ubaydli
Last updated: Jul 08, 2024 by Hannah Johnson-Keck
3 min read

Somerset Cancer Register - Remote Monitoring Service, (SCR) has partnered with Patients Know Best (PKB) to offer, as part of the Remote Monitoring System (RMS) package, a patient portal option. Patients, along with their carers and healthcare teams, can have access to their cancer digital health record, a great step forward towards better-integrated care and remote monitoring of cancer conditions and treatments.

Via the patient portal, cancer teams can give their patients access to their cancer data providing them with diagnoses, blood and radiology results, letters and a resource library of useful links and documents. Access to more patient data will be available in due course.

PKB gives patients the ability to have their cancer data in one place along with other clinical data they may be receiving from providers using PKB. The patient's record is designed to be shared digitally with anyone the patient wishes.

The RMS system for professional usage

You can find full information on RMS and the implementation process for RMS here: https://www.somersetft.nhs.uk/somerset-cancer-register/about-scr-and-rms/

Benefits for Professionals

  • Ability to create a personalised record for each patient

  • Customised follow-up activities to suit patient needs

  • Charting of patient results against agreed thresholds and safely monitor

  • Real-time view of SCR investigation data

  • Configurable letters

  • Easy-to-use worklist for caseload management and monitoring of tests

  • Interoperability of data, reducing the need for double data entry

  • Ability to control when to publish data to the patient portal

Benefits for Patients

  • A digital record that is sharable to anyone involved in the patient's care

  • Digital appointment letters and appointments in the diary section, no missed appointments

  • Laboratory results, no unnecessary phone calls to find out results

  • Receive cancer outcome letters digitally

  • Cancer symptom and measurement tracker

  • Access to all your healthcare information in one place, anytime, anywhere

Example letter viewable in PKB

Adding and viewing data

Patients have the ability to view data sent to their record from the RMS, such as their blood tests, radiology reports. Patients can also add information about themselves, like their past medical history, any operations or conditions. Patients can also track their weight and blood pressure and add any symptoms related to their condition.

Cancer Library Example

To support patients with self-management, teams can create a localised library of information for patients to access. Teams can add useful weblinks, informative/instructional videos and information leaflets to the library knowing that the information they add to the library has been approved.

Sharing

Patient’s will have their cancer team, who are looking after them, attached to their record. They can also invite anyone else involved in their care, ie a family member, private clinician or any other health care professional.

Additional features available with PKB

For customers who procure a full PKB licence there are additional features within the portal that can help teams engage and support patients under their care:

  1. Teams have the potential to set up and receive secure messages as a group or as individuals. For teams who have this team-based messaging enabled, everyone in the team who is set as ‘contactable’ receives a copy of the message.

  2. A personalised care plan can be created to assist the patient to self manage their condition

  3. A place to track and monitor any symptoms and measurements throughout their treatment.

For information on deploying RMS and PKB

Further information