Q3 2023
Wednesday 11th Oct 2023
Feature updates
1. Document types
We have added three new document types to the PKBCS05 code set: Questionnaire response, Clinician review summary and Operative report. Customers can send these documents via our HL7 API.
Bugs
1. NHS login verification token
We have introduced a timeout of 5 seconds for calls to the NHS ID token verification endpoint. This means that if a response is not received from the endpoint, it will not cause a queue for other calls.
Wednesday 27th Sept 2023
Feature updates / Bugs
1. Deactivated professionals
We have made some updates to how professionals who have been deactivated from a clinical team display on messaging threads.
When a professional is deactivated from a team, we now show the professional as deactivated in any message threads they were previously involved in. We have also added a deactivated status below their name and an information icon, which can be clicked to explain to the user what the status means.
If the deactivated professional is the only professional in the message thread with the patient, we now prevent any further replies to the thread and show a clear warning message to the patient to inform them that the professional has been deactivated.
If the professional was not the only participant in a thread with a patient, we will display their name and deactivated status at the end of the participant list.
2. Invitation tokens for registration
Organisations will no longer be able to request invitation tokens for patients under 16 years old using PKB’s APIs. This change affects the recordAccessToken REST API endpoint and $generate-invitation-tokens FHIR custom operation.
3. Error pages
We have changed the font on our downtime error pages to Mulish, which brings these error pages in line with other PKB error pages.
Wednesday 13th Sept 2023
Technical improvements
This release contains a number of background changes to improve the system's overall quality.
Wednesday 6th Sept 2023
Feature updates
1. Login screen
We have updated the warning message shown to users when they login via NHS login where this is not currently available in their area:
2. NHS app navigation
We have updated the styling of the back button within our integration with the NHS App to ensure the styling is consistent with the NHS App itself.
Wednesday 30th August 2023
Feature updates
1. Test result view
Last week we released the new tabular test result view. This week, we are adding the following enhancements to the new feature:
We now show an ‘About test’ link beside each result to allow the patients to read further information about the test on the Lab Tests Online website.
We will show how the latest test result value has changed (increased/decreased) since the last test.
When there are two results on the same day, we have relabelled the most recent result from ‘Last’ to ‘Latest’.
We have added new icons and styling for the ‘in range’ & ‘out of range’ boxes.
We now show the first line of textual reports to the main page if no value has been included alongside the report.
Bugs
1. Team data view
We have fixed an issue where a professional in multiple teams could see data that was added by any of their teams when viewing a patient record from a team that only has permission to view their own data. Now, the professional will only be able to view data added by their team.
Monday 28th August 2023
Feature updates
1. PKB Logo
We have changed the PKB logo used on our web application and in our email notifications to be the latest version of our logo.
2. NHS login in Wales
Users registered with a GP practice in Wales will temporarily be unable to use NHS login to register or log-in to PKB. Users can continue to log in with their PKB username and password and users can continue to register via all other methods (email invitation / token registration).
Technical improvements
1. Data version control
We have started a process of formalising our versioning strategy to ensure the most recently received value is considered to be the most recent version. Data sent in HL7 messages will have their entered timestamps populated from MSH-7. The entered timestamp will not be used to determine the latest version of a data point, the time when the data was saved in our database will be used for this.
Wednesday 16th August 2023
New features
1. New test result view
We have created a new tabular view of test results that will appear on the landing page of the ‘Tests’ section. This week we are releasing the new view and over the next few weeks, we will be enhancing this feature with some further updates. We now default to the tab with the tabular view, called ‘Latest’. Users can still navigate to the ‘Trend’ view to see graphs. The ‘Latest’ view has a list of test results for the most recent date in the first section and all other tests are in the section below in date order. Both sections will indicate whether results are in or out of range (if the range was sent)
Over the next few weeks, we will be making the following updates:
Adding an ‘About test’ link beside each result to allow the patients to read further information about the test on the Lab Tests Online website.
Showing how the latest test result value has changed (increased/decreased) since the last test.
When there are two results on the same day, relabelling the most recent result from ‘Last’ to ‘Latest’
Making tweaks to the font sizes
Adding new icons and styling for the ‘in range’ & ‘out of range’ boxes
Adding the first line of textual reports to the main page if no value has been included alongside the report
If the team has applied their brand colours to hyperlinks, we will overwrite this with black for the test hyperlink to improve accessibility
Adding a link to load more tests on the tabular view. For the first release, only tests with a measurement in the last 500 measurements that were taken for a patient are shown.
Feature updates
1. Email notification for Plans
Unregistered patients who have an email address in their record will now receive an email notification when a new Plan is added to their record. Previously, only registered patients received these email notifications.
2. REST API: GET /v1/users/self/patients
We have updated the GET /v1/users/self/patients endpoint within our REST API to refine the attributes that are returned in the response:
Removed
genderMF
jobTitle
organizationName
teamName
patient
userType
heightCm, weightKg
heightFeet, heightInches, heightInchesTotal, weightLbs
orgLevelIds, teamLevelIds
Added
middleNames
nationalIds
For full details on the updated specification please see GET /v1/users/self/patients.
3. New error message
We have added a new error message to appear when there is an error loading patient data from our FHIR datastore. The error advises the patient how to resolve the issue and what to do if the issue persists.
4. NHS login
We have updated the NHS login feature to check whether the patient’s GP practice is in an area where NHS login can be used to access Patients Know Best when the patient tries to log in with NHS login. If the patient is not in an area where NHS login should be enabled for use with PKB, the patient will be shown an error message and asked to log in with their PKB username and password instead.
Wednesday 2nd August 2023
Feature updates
1. Medications and conditions
We have converted medications and conditions to FHIR structures and these are now being fetched directly from our FHIR store and shown in the User Interface. This also enables customers to send us these data types as FHIR resources in order to populate the PKB record.
Wednesday 26th July 2023
Feature updates
1. Freeze record
If a patient’s record has been frozen, they are now shown a message stating ‘Access to this record is currently unavailable’ when they attempt to log in. Previously, they were shown a message stating that their record had been frozen. We have made this change following consultation with clinical teams using the Freeze Record feature. You can read more about this feature in our manual.
Thursday 20th July 2023
Feature updates
1. Symptoms screen
When a patient records the same symptom multiple times in one day, the highest severity that the patient recorded is now shown. This has been changed from the average severity, to ensure that clinicians are always aware of a patient’s most severe symptoms.
2. Swagger documentation
We have updated the Get Allergies for patient endpoint link to take users to the allergy entity page. We have also removed the 'Diagnosis.Entered' link.
3. MedMij documents
Patients in the Netherlands who have had documents added to their record via the MedMij integration can now delete these documents from their PKB record. The documents will be re-added to their records as long as the sending organisation re-sends the document when the patient clicks ‘Update my record’.
Bugs
1. Session timeout
We have resolved an issue where user actions, such as typing in a message field, were not extending the user’s session correctly, so users were being logged out after 30 minutes regardless of whether they were actively typing.
2. EMIS updates
We have resolved an issue where we were sometimes processing the latest updates received from EMIS before processing older updates. This has now been changed to ensure the latest updates are always processed last to ensure the most up-to-date version is displayed in the record.
Technical improvements
1. FHIR API - Date of last data point
We have optimised our database retrieval mechanism for requests to our date of last data point FHIR API so that results are returned quicker.
Wed 5th July 2023
Feature updates
1. Custom REST API - Diagnoses
Our GET Diagnoses REST API endpoint: /v2-beta/diagnoses/forPatient/{patientId}, will no longer return the severity element. This has been removed as PKB does not support the concept of severity for diagnoses.
2. Freeze record
Team professionals can now use the ‘Freeze record’ feature to freeze access to any patient’s record, regardless of their age. Previously, the feature was only available for patients who were under 18. When a record is frozen, patients cannot log into their PKB record and their carers cannot access their record. The ‘Freeze record’ feature can be used to block access where it would be unsafe for a patient to access their record. For example, during a mental health crisis or when there are safeguarding concerns.
Bugs
1. Coordinators - multiple teams
We have resolved a bug where team coordinators that are in multiple teams were to be unable to log in if they had been deactivated from one of their teams. Coordinators in multiple teams can now log in even after being deactivated by any of their teams.