Patient Engagement Platform Design and Development for NHS
- Part of an ambitious digital project with Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, the Great North Care Record (GNCR) and NHS Digital covering the 3.6 million people living across the north of England.
- Design and development of an engagement platform that makes it possible for patients to view and interact with secondary health and care services digitally for the first time.
- Accessed via either a web browser version or a mobile app via NHS App both authenticated via NHS Login.
The Ambition
The Great North Care Record (GNCR), a collaboration of NHS organisations, Local Authorities, and Universities across the North East and North Cumbria, is an ambitious initiative led by the Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and is a way for both patients and healthcare professionals to interact with patient information centrally. It covers 3.6 million people living in the North East and North Cumbria. It allows information recorded about people’s health and care, such as appointments, diagnoses, and treatments, to be seamlessly shared across healthcare services.
The NHS team needed a partner to design and develop a unifying platform to enable patients to interact with NHS services digitally.
What We Did
We developed a user-friendly digital platform accessible to patients through integration with the NHS app website and mobile app. This platform enables various NHS organisations to seamlessly offer appointments and correspondence directly from their systems. The platform also provides appointment reminders and monitors how frequently patients access the service. Through this integrated approach, patients can conveniently access their records and engage with them digitally.
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Discovery and Requirements Analysis
Creating a patient engagement platform like this, which facilitates seamless communication between various healthcare organisations and patients, required addressing numerous complexities. Consequently, the project commenced with a thorough discovery and requirements analysis phase.
Through close collaboration with personnel from clinical teams, operations, NHS Digital, NHS Login, and GNCR, we developed a detailed set of requirements and a platform specification. Achieving this level of detail and specificity was made possible through a flexible procurement process.
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NHS Digital Design System baked-in
The platform adheres closely to industry best practices and follows the guidelines outlined in the NHS Digital Service Manual. Leveraging our expertise in content design alongside these guidelines ensures that the platform offers a uniform, accessible, inclusive, and user-friendly service that prioritises people and aims to enhance patient outcomes. We developed the platform to adhere to W2C WCAG 2.1 accessibility guidelines.
We collaborated directly with the NHS Digital and NHS App teams to integrate the NHS Global Design Language into the platform. Users have the option to log in via the NHS App, but we also implemented a browser-based method to accommodate individuals who do not use smartphones or tablets, ensuring accessibility for all users.
Platform Development
We built the Patient Engagement Platform using the NHS’s preferred technology stack. The platform is a .NET application which includes: front-end interfaces delivered through NHS App, an admin portal where users can edit and add data, and an API that allows for communication between PEP and the multiple NHS Organisations. The platform interfaces with a Trust integration engine (TIE) providing a clean consistent data gateway interface between Trust systems and the platform.
Designed in collaboration with NHS Digital the platform is fully flexible and extendible with the ability to include additional services when GNCR / the Trusts are able to support them. This also has the benefit of allowing GNCR to use their existing systems and processes with no requirement for different working practices.
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Improving the patient experience
The platform offers patients increased choice and involvement, granting them greater control and flexibility over their healthcare journey. By keeping patients engaged and informed, the platform actively involves them in their care, providing readily accessible information at their fingertips. This enhanced understanding fosters a higher likelihood of patients correctly following instructions, ultimately reducing instances of missed appointments and the need for rescheduling.
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Accessibility
As well as NHS guidelines we also work to wider accessibility guidelines like W3C WCAG 2.1. The platform has undergone and passed formal accessibility testing by Nomensa as well as NHS Digital’s user experience and design testing.
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