Digital solutions

Digital letters explained

Improving your care with digital systems

New technology helps us to deliver safe, high-quality and efficient clinical care for our patients.

Our digital systems are designed to improve how we connect and communicate with patients to ensure we provide excellent care, whether remotely or in person. They also enable you to take control of your own healthcare—including booking appointments, accessing your electronic health record, and remotely monitoring and reporting your symptoms.

We bring our teams to you with video consultations from the comfort of your home or workplace. We’re listening to you about what works best for you.

Patient health status questionnaire

We send text messages to adult patients waiting for surgeries, operations and tests. The text includes a link to a survey. This survey starts by asking if you still need the planned surgery, operation or test.

If you answer ‘yes’, you will then answer some health questions to help us prepare for your surgery. Completing these questions helps us plan any extra appointments you may need before your surgery or on the day of surgery.

For some patients, completing the survey may mean you do not need to come to the hospital for an appointment before your surgery. We may also ask if you can come in at short notice. Please tell us if this is possible so we can contact you if an earlier slot becomes available. Your answers are valid for six months.

If you have more than one procedure planned, you only need to complete the form once. If you let us know you no longer need surgery, we will inform your GP and remove your name from the waiting list.

If you have questions after receiving this message, please call us on 020 3315 3194.

Patient communication tablets

Our Trust, working together with our charity CW+, has tablets available to support patients, fully equipped with apps and internet access. These devices are intended as communication and engagement tools for patients. Please ask a member of staff for more details.

Integrating digital solutions

We use digital technologies to ensure we provide the best possible care and experience both in our hospitals and in the community. We invite patients by text message or email to access the services below to ensure we deliver the best possible care.

Care Coordination Solution

North West London acute trusts use Care Coordination Solution (CCS) a part of the national Improving Elective Care Coordination for Patients programme. This allows the trusts to better plan, schedule and manage patients through their pathways by integrating data from several systems into a single user interface.

CCS leverages data from key systems by creating a truly single point of access to support managing the patient pathway. This allows the Trust to create a ‘single version of the truth’ in one system for clinicians, operational management and administrative staff to use live data and near real time synchronisation with the multiple clinical systems so that we can treat patients in the right order, faster.

Care Information Exchange (CIE)

The CIE is a web application provided by PatientsKnowBest (PKB) that gives patients access to their health records, which can be updated by the patient and shared with different medical teams and carers to help speed up and improve treatment.

Your information is held in the secure NHS network and is only used by healthcare professionals for your direct care. You can choose to share your care record with your family, carers, GP, and other health professionals if you wish.

• Learn more about the CIE and register for a CIE account
• Log on to your CIE account
• Watch an overview of PatientsKnowBest

If you have difficulty or are unable to register on the link above, please complete this form.

• Further information about your online health records

DrDoctor

The Trust and DrDoctor work together closely to benefit our patients. To use the benefits of DrDoctor, you will need to log in with your surname, postcode and date of birth.

• Log on to your DrDoctor account
• FAQs and information on how to use DrDoctor

DrDoctor has four main benefits for patients:

• Patients receive a text message with a link to their hospital letter, which means they can see their letter quicker while saving the NHS money and helping the environment—our patients love this service, with only about 4% still choosing to receive paper letters
• Patients receive text reminders about their upcoming outpatient appointments meaning they never forget when to come to hospital
• Patients can reschedule their own appointment—no need to call the hospital, you can communicate with us conveniently through your mobile device or computer
• Patients with long term conditions can book themselves directly into a specialist appointment to reduce the number of patients seeking treatment in A&E—this means our A&E department can focus on the most urgent cases and ensures that our patients receive better, more appropriate care if they experience a flare-up of their symptoms

Isla

Patient Initiated Follow-Up (PIFU)

PIFU improves the convenience and availability of your care by giving you direct access to your care team, allowing you to request an appointment when you need one for 6 to 12 months after your last appointment. This service is delivered in partnership with digital health company DrDoctor.

Regular appointments scheduled by the hospital are not always appropriate as they often occur months apart when you're feeling well and don't need to be seen, rather than specifically when needed. Regular follow-up appointments that require no change in treatment take up your time unnecessarily. Being discharged from a hospital clinic can be concerning but this service aims to support you in managing your health and giving you direct access back to your specialist care team for a year afterwards.

This service allows us to: 

• Give you more choice over your time, care and experience 
• Ensure you have access to your care team if your condition flares up 
• Ensure you are only coming to hospital when you really need to
• Limit the stress of attending hospital (taking time off work, travelling and waiting)

DBm-Health

The Trust and Sensyne Health are working on their innovative DBm-Health app that enables patients to manage their diabetes more effectively from home.

DBm-Health has been co-designed by diabetes clinicians at the Trust and Sensyne Health to enable patients to remotely monitor blood glucose levels while allowing clinicians to see their results, stay in regular contact with them and reduce the need to go into the hospital.

DBm-Health is a secure patient-clinician communication system comprising a smartphone app that allows patients with diabetes or at a risk of diabetes, to record their blood glucose levels and communicate these to their care team.

In addition, the app shows you messages from your healthcare team and, if you have questions, you can request a callback from them through the app. DBm-Health can help to limit hospital visits by providing blood glucose readings and other patient information which can be viewed remotely by clinicians.

Using the app, you can record more data with the reading:

• What time of day the reading was for (eg before breakfast or after lunch)
• What medications you took
• Any comments that you think will be helpful to your health care team

You can enter blood glucose levels in two ways:

• By connecting to a blood glucose meter that you have set up with the app
• By entering a value manually

The app sends all this information to your care team who will look at the data and contact you if they need to. The app also includes self-help guides and you can review a record of your blood glucose readings in diary and graph format helping you to manage your blood glucose levels.

NHS England Test Beds programme wave 2

The Trust is proud to have participated in the second wave of the NHS England Test Beds programme in 2019/20. This ambitious programme brought together innovators, industry and the NHS to tackle some of the biggest challenges facing the NHS. The Trust’s project, in partnership with Imperial Collage Healthcare Partners, was Developing a Schedule for Unscheduled Care. This initiative focused on leveraging digital applications to enhance access to clinical information and urgent care for patients with long-term conditions.

• Full evaluation of this project