Overview

Features

GP data for patients in England

Why is this a priority?

We want every patient to automatically have data from their GP in their PKB record.

Our integrations with EMIS Web and TPP SystmOne will use NHS Login to link a patient to their GP practice to retrieve their data. As soon as they log in with NHS Login, they will have their GP data in their PKB record.

1.5 million patients already log in using NHS login and this number is increasing by 1000 patients each day. This integration lets us easily give these patients their GP data without the patient needing to supply additional information.

This integration will initially be available for patients in England. Some patients in England are already getting GP data added to their PKB record or will get it from integrations set-up at an organisation level: EMIS Extract Service - 337,042 patients, North West London Data Discovery Service - 2.4 million patients. These integrations will remain active. We will de-duplicate GP data in a patient’s record if they are receiving it from more than one source.

We would like to expand this to other countries once they have the national infrastructure in place to allow us to build something similar there. Patients in the Netherlands can already get their GP data in their PKB record as PKB is a certified personal health environment (PGO) in the Netherlands.

What are we building?

• Integrating with EMIS Web and TPP SystmOne via the NHS IM1 programme.

• Once a patient logs in with NHS Login once, their record will be pulled and will be regularly updated from that point. No further action is required by the patient.

• GP practice does not need to enable the integration with PKB but does need to have online services enabled.

• Will get demographics, conditions, medications, allergies, appointments, test results, measurements, immunisations, documents & carer information/proxy records. Data types will be added in phases.

• Data will be stored in FHIR format.

How are we rolling it out? 

• EMIS will go-live first, then SystmOne.

• Initially will show conditions, medications and appointments in the UI.

• Will make other data types available via FHIR API: immunisations, allergies, procedures, observations.

• Will then gradually add more data to the UI as we migrate those data types to FHIR or add new screens in PKB. 

Roadmap

Advanced questionnaires

Why is this a priority?

Organisations use online questionnaires as a quick and convenient way to communicate with and gather information from their patients. Organisations can send questionnaires to large groups of patients, for example to monitor waiting lists, or to individual patients, for example to assess them pre-operation. Improving questionnaires has been our most common customer request for the last few years.

Unregistered patients can answer a questionnaire before registration and will have the option to register once they’ve submitted their answers, so sending questionnaires can also increase registration rates.

This project moves our questionnaires to FHIR storage so it contributes to our migration to a FHIR native architecture.

What are we building?

• Questionnaires with an improved user experience and new features such as support for branching, scoring, capturing coded data, images.

  • Live since Q4 2023.

• Advanced questionnaires can be sent to registered and unregistered patients. Unregistered patients can register with NHS Login after completing the questionnaire.

  • Live via FHIR API since Q4 2024.

  • Currently working on UI trigger and response retrieval.

• Questionnaires can be edited after submission or completed by another user for the patient, e.g. carer.

• Patient’s can initiate an online consultation with their team via a questionnaire.

How are we rolling it out? 

We’re introducing Advanced Questionnaires in phases so that teams can start using it as soon as the features they need are available.

Since phase one, Advanced Questionnaires have supported new features within the questionnaire itself like branching, scoring, coded data, images.

Advanced questionnaires can now be sent to registered and not registered patients and their responses retrieved via our FHIR API.

We are continuing development to add more options for organisations to use these Advanced Questionnaires in their workflows. Examples of workflows we want to support include:

• sending and downloading responses from the PKB UI

  • Will support sending to individual patients first and then whole teams.

• editing questionnaires after a patients submits

• allowing patients to initiate an online consultation using a questionnaire

You can read more about the Advanced Questionnaires roadmap and rollout in our wiki.

Roadmap

Sending SMS notifications

Why is this a priority?

PKB notifications have been limited to email. SMS has been a priority for organisations because they often have more verified phone numbers than email addresses for their patients. Organisations can thus reach more patients via SMS to increase their registration rates.

What are we building?

PKB will text patients encouraging them to register using NHS login when they get new data from their providers.

The SMS service is run through gov.notify and organisations can decide if they want to use this pathway for notifications. All patients will continue to get email notifications. 

How are we rolling it out? 

We added support for different phone number types so that we can store mobile phone numbers for patients to send SMS notifications to. 

Now we are focusing on sending an SMS to prompt a patient to registered when they receive new data. We will roll this out iteratively one data type at a time.

Our priority data triggers are:

• referral letters

• questionnaires

• appointment reminders

Roadmap

NHS App Wales

Why is this a priority?

Over 50% of our users are logging in to PKB via the NHS App. NHS App is being used by 31 million people in England and so it’s an important route for patients to access their PKB record. We want to continue working with the NHS App in other parts of the UK.

What are we building?

Patients will be able to navigate to their PKB record from the NHS App Wales. They can log in via NHS Login.

This work will also allow patients in Wales to log in to PKB via NHS Login again.

How are we rolling it out? 

Once we have NHS Login approval to go live, we will switch it on for a pilot organisation.

Roadmap

NHS App England - Wayfinder notifications and messaging

Why is this a priority?

The NHS App is working with acute NHS Trusts to enable patients to securely view summary details of their referrals and scheduled appointments within the NHS App. If an organisation is taking part in this programme (Wayfinder), patients will find any upcoming appointments from that organisation in the NHS App in the Appointments section.

The Wayfinder programme has set mandatory features for Patient Engagement Portals (PEPs) to continue participating in the programme. The first feature we’ll work on is sending patients push notifications and messages in the NHS App when they have new data.

What are we building?

When a patient gets a new or updated appointment. They will receive a push notification in the NHS app and will have a message in the NHS App telling them that a new appointment has been added.

If a patient opens their NHS App message within fours hours, we will not send them an email notification about the appointment.

If they don’t open it within four hours or the message in the NHS App fails to notify the patient within an hour, we will send the patient an email notifications about the appointment.

In the future, we will repeat this for other data that we add to the Wayfinder programme, for example documents and questionnaires.

How are we rolling it out? 

Once built and signed off by the Wayfinder team, we will roll out to a single trust as a First Of Type and then roll it out for the other organisations participating in the Wayfinder programme .

Roadmap

FHIR APIs

Why is this a priority?

In order to achieve our mission of providing all patients with a copy of their data, PKB needs full interoperability to enable partners and users to exchange data. Our strategy to achieve this is to standardise on FHIR APIs.

What are we building?

Organisations can already send their data as FHIR Resources to PKB. We are transitioning our system to a FHIR-native architecture, one datatype at a time. Once we have mapped, migrated and aggregated a data type it is available to view in our web application and our read-only FHIR API. 

How are we rolling it out? 

Conditions, medications and appointments have been migrated and can already be seen in our UI. 

The next data types we migrate will be:

• questionnaires (see section on Advanced Questionnaires)

• document metadata

• observations - maps to data that populates the Tests, Measurements and Imaging pages in PKB records

The remaining data types will be sequenced depending on customers’ abilities. We prioritise releasing the most data to the most patients.

Roadmap

Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Why is this a priority?

We want organisations and patients to be able to access their data via our APIs. To do this, we need to authenticate and authorise their usage.

This work enables us to support scenarios that have been requested by users for a long time, e.g. various multi-factor authentication options, integration with other authentication systems like Active Directory, allowing multiple roles for the same person. Thus, it makes it easier for us to integrate with products that patients are already using to manage their health.

What are we building?

• Granular access control, e.g. patients can allow an app to have read-only access to certain data only

• Multiple user roles

• Improve multi-factor authentication (MFA) options

How are we rolling it out? 

We will be working this project iteratively starting with organisation-level access and then patient-level access to their own data.

Roadmap

Feature improvements

Throughout the year, we will continue to make minor improvements to the user interface for patients and professionals. These changes are planned regularly so we only plan three months ahead.

What are we currently working on? 

Plans

Teams will be able to add sections to their plans that cannot be edited by patients. They will also have the option to lock plans so that they cannot be edited by patients.

Email notifications

Patients will be able to unsubscribe from email notifications that are not about time-sensitive information. We are aware that patients often find email notifications about demographic updates confusing so we are exploring solutions to improve their experience.

Roadmap

Platform maintenance

We dedicate engineering resources to platform maintenance to ensure the stability and reliability of our services. This includes ongoing updates, optimisations, and enhancements to our infrastructure to provide a seamless user experience. One goal that we are working towards is being able to release new versions of Patients Know Best without downtime for users and API customers. Additionally, we are prioritising security measures to safeguard our platform and protect user data from potential threats and vulnerabilities.