iPLATO Healthcare, leader in mobile health promotion, revealed that coverage of their Patient Care Messaging services has risen to over a million GP patients. Fuelling this growth has been the ground breaking platform combined with the company’s unique service offering and expertise which allows its NHS partners to dramatically improve patient access and deliver powerful health promotion campaigns. With continued focus on delivering improved health of patient and populations in partnership with primary care organisations iPLATO expects reaching 10 million patients within the next 24 months.

To accelerate the growth of the company’s service offering beyond text and voice messaging it has launched a mobile health portal framework targeted at access improvement, health promotion and support to people with long term conditions. iPLATO’s NHS partners will start benefiting from the mobile portal framework and richer mobile health applications in the New Year.

Tobias Alpsten, Managing Director of iPLATO, said: “Reaching our first million patients is only a step on the way. There are more than 3 billion mobile handsets in the world today, each owned by a person for whom health is important, so there is a lot of room for growth. In addition to our in-house research and development efforts we actively seek partners with specific clinical skills to add to our overall service offering. We owe our healthcare provider partners and patients best-of-breed services. We expect many of these new, exiting, services to be delivered in partnership with universities, hospitals, clinical experts and other innovation companies across the world. We are especially interested in mobile applications that support people with long term conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, asthma, depression and coronary heat disease.”

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[1] Tower Hamlets Primary Care Trust has partnered with mobile health promotion specialists iPLATO to help increase the number of women attending breast cancer screening clinics. Supported by the Public Health Team, twenty GP surgeries will use the iPLATO patient care messaging system to send patients timely reminders of their screening appointment.“We will be using the text messaging system for breast screening appointment reminders in the coming weeks,” said, Virginia Patania, Practice Manager at the Jubilee Place Practice. “We are looking forward to the opportunity of providing an innovative service that aims to increase the effectiveness of the breast screening programme.”

Breast cancer is the second most common cause of cancer in Tower Hamlets. One in nine women will develop breast cancer at some point in their life and it is essential that attending a breast screening invitation is regarded as a high priority.

The borough has a culturally diverse population and communicating effectively to all groups the importance of screening is vital for the success of the breast screening programme. With 82% of the UK adult population owning a mobile phone, text messaging has proved to be an effective way of communicating with patients.

Ian Basnett director of public health team said, “Crucial to a continued reduction in breast cancer mortality is early diagnosis, as the earlier cancer is identified, the easier it is to treat and the better the prognosis. One way of identifying cancer at an early stage is through screening. Our role has been to commission safe, effective and quality assured breast screening services for the eligible population of the PCT. Public health staff work with the screening provider to encourage women to attend their appointment. We have chosen to test whether text messaging can help with this process and the iPLATO platform has demonstrated success in other areas of public health.”

Eligible women are now being invited from postal codes E1, E2, and E3 to attend for breast screening.

Women interested in this free reminder service should ensure that their mobile number is recorded with their GP surgery.

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Notes for Editors:

About Breast Cancer in Tower Hamlets

Breast cancer is the most common cause of cancer in the UK, accounting for 30% of all cancers diagnosed. Tower Hamlets has fewer cases of breast cancer than the national average, probably because breast cancer tends to be more common in affluent populations. The national target for breast screening coverage is 70% for women aged 53 to 70 years. Coverage in Tower Hamlets at 31 March 2005 was 37.8% and national coverage was 75.5%. This extremely low coverage was largely due to the failure of the screening service to find suitable sites for the breast screening mobile unit.

About Tower Hamlets PCT

Tower Hamlets Primary Care Trust is made up of 1,250 nurses, midwives, therapists, doctors, support and public health staff, working with more than 158 GPs in 36 practices. We are improving health by:

• Commissioning services from NHS Trusts and others to meet the needs of local people
• Providing high quality health care in the local community
• Working with general practitioners, the local authority, NHS Trusts and voluntary organisations to find new, better ways to provide care

Press contact:

Jeremy Gardner, 020 8223 8921

iPLATO is looking for commercial and solution partners around the world. If your company is interested in partnering with us or would like to find out more information please contact us at: [2] info@iplato.net

[1] Patients in Barking and Dagenham will soon be receiving health promotion information and appointment reminders to their mobiles phones via text message. Barking and Dagenham Primary Care Trust has offered the iPLATO Patient Care Messaging platform to their GP surgeries after evaluating the benefits of using mobile technology as a targeted and highly responsive way of engaging with patients.

Funded centrally by the PCT, the service will be used to help address important public health concerns such as smoking, flu and childhood immunisations and obesity. The system works by integrating with the GPs’ clinical system where patient records are stored. Surgeries can use the clinical information they hold to target specific patients for health promotion campaigns and send groups of patients text message invitations to clinics. To achieve optimal uptake of this free service, surgeries will be encouraging their patients to hand in and update their mobile contact details.

Dr. J. John, GP at the King Edwards Medical Centre, and one of the 13 practices who have already signed up to Patient Care Messaging said, “Mobile phones are used by a lot of our patients and so text messaging is an effective way to communicate with them. As a doctor with a special interest in CHD, I see this service as a great tool for the support of efficient health promotion campaigns. This service has the potential to increase significantly the number of patients attending clinics as well as saving on surgery administration costs.”

Participating surgeries will also benefit from the automated appointment reminder functionality of the text messaging system. Patients will automatically receive personalised text reminders at a set time before their appointment, which they can reply to if they need to cancel. This feature is integral to helping reduce missed appointments while enhancing patient access.

With an estimated 82% of the UK adult population owning a mobile phone, once fully launched, the participating surgeries will be able to reach a significant number of their patients through this scheme.

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Notes for Editors:

About Barking & Dagenham PCT

Barking and Dagenham Primary Care Trust is responsible for improving the health and well-being of local people by ensuring that appropriate services are available in the right place and at the right time. The PCT does this by entering into agreements with health care providers, such as hospitals, to provide a wide range of different health services, ensuring that patients have a choice about where they go for treatment. It also directly provides community-based health services such as health visiting, physiotherapy and district nursing, and is responsible for developing primary care services in conjunction with GPs, dentists, opticians and pharmacists. Barking and Dagenham Primary Care Trust was set up in April 2001 and employs around 560 staff.

Press contact:

Rowan Taylor
Barking and Dagenham
Head of Communications
020 8532 6220
[3] rowan.taylor@bdpct.nhs.uk

iPLATO will be exhibiting at the 2007 INPS National Vision User Group Conference. The event, which will be hosted at the Holiday Day Inn Hotel, Stratford upon Avon will see Vision users from around the country attend the event. iPLATO will be presenting to Vision users the latest development and uses of Patient Care Messaging for health promotion and access related campaigns.

iPLATO will also be showcasing for the first time their M-Site application service. Based on content provided by the practice, this ground-breaking mobile health service information portal allows patients to view via their mobile phone browser, detailed information of healthcare service providers within their locality, including contact details, openings times as well as maps of the area and links to out-of-hours services.

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Delivering critical health information to the people that need it most, nine GP surgeries in Lambeth, South London have been using iPLATO Patient Care Messaging to send text message invitations to patients for their annual Flu immunisation. Supported by Lambeth Primary Care Trust the initiative aims to increase immunisation rates amongst “at risk” patients whilst streamlining service delivery. Both the elderly and patients with chronic conditions, who are particularly susceptible to the flu during the winter months, are invited for free vaccinations via text message from their GP surgeries.

“During this time of year, we usually get the practice staff involved in stuffing hundreds of envelopes with invitation letters to the Flu- Jab clinics”, said Belinda Anderson, Practice Manager from the Binfield Road Surgery. “The iPLATO system was indispensable in running this years’ campaign. Using Patient Care Messaging we sent out 74 text messages in a single go and within minutes we had patients calling the surgery to book their appointments. There was a definite cost and time saving value compared to the traditional ways we usually contact patients.”

Flu is a highly infectious illness which spreads very rapidly from person to person through the coughs and sneezes of those who are already carrying the virus. Flu immunisation (flu jab) affords protection from flu and lasts for one year. The vaccine, which is normally available in the autumn, is made from the strain of flu that is expected in the coming winter. In order to remain protected, it is recommended that “at-risk” patients ensure that they have a flu jab every year.

Tobias Alpsten, iPLATO Managing Director said, “Our aim is to help surgeries use existing channels of communication that combined with targeted intelligence, engage with patients in a seamless manner. The support we provide to surgeries ensures that they reach their immunisation targets through quality campaigns that we have developed and improved over time. The positive response to the flu-jab campaigns illustrates that mobile technology is a powerful tool that has the potential to be successfully used in a variety of immunisation situations - pandemic and childhood immunisations are but two examples.”

iPLATO Patient Care Messaging is the only system to integrate with all major GP Administration Systems and is currently used across 23 Primary Care Trusts in England. As another National first, in the coming weeks, Lambeth surgeries will try iPLATO automated voice reminders as an additional means of inviting patients to flu-jab clinics.

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Notes for Editors:

About Lambeth PCT

Lambeth PCT was set up in 2002 and has since worked to assess the healthcare needs of the people who live in, work in or visit Lambeth and then to meet these needs by:

• Providing services through teams (such as district nursing, health visiting, therapy services, foot health, child health, family planning and elderly & intermediate care), and by arranging the provision of out-of-hours GP services.
• Planning and paying for services provided by primary care contractors (dentists, GPs, optometrists, pharmacists), NHS trusts and foundation trusts (hospitals and mental health & substance misuse services) and voluntary and independent sector organisations.
• Protecting the health of our communities and promoting good health.

Press contact:

Nick Flairclough
Lambeth Primary Care Trust
Associate Director of Communications
Tel: 0207 717 4701
Email: [4] nick.fairclough@lambethpct.nhs.uk

As a result of one of the first population-wide deployments of text messaging services, GP surgeries across Lewisham Primary Care Trust in South London, have reduced missed appointments by 27% over the last year. The reduction has been attributed to surgeries using iPLATO Patient Care Messaging, the leading platform for text appointment reminders and other mobile patient services in UK Primary Care.

In order to receive the service, patients register their mobile phone number at their surgery in order to receive appointment reminders and health information direct to their mobile phones. From modest beginnings, the service now reaches 43% of the population covered by the participating GP surgeries. As a result, the mobile channel has now become the key electronic channel for patient interaction throughout the area. The service has proven to be hugely popular among patients as indicated by a 50% increase in PCT-wide text volumes over the last 12 month period.

Introduced to help reduce the high level of missed appointments and to create an effective channel of communication between patients, the PCT chose to subsidise the installation and the cost of text messages for the surgeries. Marie Searle, Practice Manager at Honor Oak Practice, an experienced user of the system said, “We have an ethnically and socially very diverse population in Lewisham. A vast majority of patients already use their mobile phone to run their daily lives and our experience of using this system from both the staff and patients” perspective has been very positive.”

Tobias Alpsten, Managing Director of iPLATO, said: “Using modern technology to communicate with over 100,000 residents across the locality, Lewisham PCT has shown how to achieve radically improved access and health promotion across a significant part of their population. The visible service improvement for patients, along with proven efficiency savings and a smooth launch process make this a huge achievement, especially under the financial restrictions of the last NHS financial year. We are obviously thrilled to work with Lewisham PCT and the practices to further develop their mobile patient services over the coming months and years. We also hope to achieve similar results with other PCTs because, if rolled out throughout the NHS in England, we could save over 2.7 million GP appointments and 1.3 million Practice Nurse appointments per year by simply replicating our success in Lewisham.”

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Notes for Editors:

About Lewisham Primary Care Trust

Lewisham Primary Care Trust is responsible for community and primary care services in Lewisham. It is also responsible for commissioning local hospital and mental health services.

Press Contact :

Kelly Scanlon, Head of Communications
020 7206 3334
[5] Kelly.scanlon@lewishampct.nhs.uk

City and Hackney Primary Care Trust has partnered with mobile healthcare specialist iPLATO and seven local GP surgeries to pilot the use of advanced messaging services to reduce the prevalence of smoking in the borough. Supported by the PCT, GP surgeries will use iPLATO’s platform, Patient Care Messaging integrated to their GP system, to engage directly with patients around smoking status updates, invitation to stop smoking clinics, on-going quit support and follow-ups.

With smoking prevalence in City & Hackney touching 34% - significantly higher than the national average of 27.5% - it is paramount for the PCT to try new ways of engaging with smokers with a view to, over time, reduce the rate of smoking and associated long term costs for hospitalisation. By engaging directly with smokers through their mobile phones rather than the traditional method of broadcasting population-wide messages via posters or adverts, the PCT expects to significantly and cost effectively increase the number of people seeking support from the quit smoking services and, therefore, the number of smokers kicking the habit.

Sima Chaudhury, City and Hackney tPCT Health Improvement Practitioner, Tobacco Control, said, “We chose to partner with iPLATO because the technology has proven to be successful. We are very committed to helping smokers quit, and pleased to offer this additional support to our surgeries to expand and accelerate their efforts.”

City and Hackneys strategy is to reduce smoking prevalence, paying particular attention to achieving a reduction in those groups most at risk (unemployed people, manual social classes, pregnant women, younger people and specific communities with high prevalence). Text messaging is perfect means of uniformly addressing a population across different socio-economic strata. The democratic nature of the channel means that ownership of mobile phones and the use of text messaging is evenly spread across these groups.

Tobias Alpsten, Managing Director of iPLATO said, “City and Hackney just as many smoking cessation teams around the country provide good service to smokers who contact them. The main weakness of the traditional system is that the services are not particularly well promoted. By using iPLATO’s unique platform combined with our experience in mobile health promotion services we will help improve data accuracy on the GP systems, referral rates and, as a result, significantly increase the overall number of quitters. This concept is applicable nationally and internationally. It can also be used in other areas of public health such as obesity, mental health and immunisation.”

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Notes for Editors:

About City and Hackney tPCT Stop Smoking Service

City and Hackney tPCT Stop Smoking Service has been in operation since 2001. As a smoke-free PCT, City and Hackney provide a dedicated Stop Smoking Service to their residents and workers of the borough. Smoking Cessation services are provided to individuals and groups of smokers who are ready to quit. The programme is FREE and is a combination of free support and medication, such as nicotine patches.

Contacts for City and Hackney tPCT:

Ian Quigley
CHtPCT
020 7683 4047
[6] ian.quigley@chpct.nhs.uk

Sima Chaudhury
CHtPCT
020 7683 4038
[7] sima.chaudhury@chpct.nhs.uk

Zena Martin
Acknowledge Communications
07714 664 505
[8] zena@acknowledgecommunications.com

Management in Practice Events are dedicated to practice managers. They are designed to address the ever expanding role and responsibilities of today’s primary care practice manager. iPLATO will be featuring Patient Care Messaging at this year MIP Conference, highlighting the use of the system as a channel for enhancing patient communication and improving efficiency in achieving QOF targets within the GP setting.

Areas of discussion during this year’s event will include best practice and a wide range of current issues including:

• GP’s premises/practice collaboration
• Practice Based Commissioning
• Abuse of patients
• Choose and book
• Practice nurse training
• Self care
• Promoting immunisation

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The 14th annual EMIS National User Group Conference to be hosted at Warwick University will see iPLATO featured as an exhibitor. The event brings together primary care professionals from all over the UK to examine the latest developments in improving patient care through the use of health information and information technology. iPLATO will be showcasing Patient Care Messaging and speaking to attending EMIS users about the benefits of using an integrated text communication solution to improve patient care delivery. Over the two day event iPLATO will have live demonstrations of Patient Care Messaging and will be offering attendee’s the chance to trial the system.

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In the largest deployment of population-wide mobile healthcare services to date iPLATO announced today that it had signed up 26 doctors’ surgeries in the London borough of Hammersmith and Fulham to its iPLATO Patient Care Messaging service. As a result, over 165,000 patients will be able to interact with their doctors on diverse health related subjects such as appointments, periodic reviews, smoking status, immunisation and invitations to specialist clinics directly via mobile text messaging.

Funded centrally by Hammersmith and Fulham Primary Care Trust the service specifically targets important public health concerns such as smoking, flu + childhood immunisation and obesity. A crucial aspect of delivering these goals is iPLATO’s ability to integrate to multiple GP systems and, therefore, enable surgeries to base their mobile patient services on live data residing in their patients’ electronic records. To achieve optimal uptake the service is free to patients and to participating GP surgeries. As a result of a strong value proposition, a forward looking PCT and quality practice engagement, an overwhelming 90% all surgeries within the Trust signed up to the iPLATO service over a two month sign-up period in the beginning of the summer.

Dr Aras, a Fulham GP and one of many who have signed up to Patient Care Messaging has said, “In our area the majority of people have mobile phones, and unlike an answer machine at home or work a text message to a personal mobile will get the correct person and with privacy.” On the ability to send appointment reminders to patients Dr Aras added that, “Even if people can’t attend an appointment the new system gives them a quick and easy way to cancel by return text, which lets us offer the slot to someone else.”

Tobias Alpsten, Managing Director of iPLATO, said: “Hammersmith and Fulham PCT have been unprecedented in their approach to rolling out Patient Care Messaging. It is the largest population-wide deployment to date and will underpin improved efficiency, improved marketing of NHS services and large scale telehealth services to 90% of the residents. This success is down to a visionary PCT, open minded GPs and practice managers. It also highlights iPLATO’s ability to balance interests from various groups to make service improvement reality in primary care.”

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Notes for Editors:

About Hammersmith and Fulham PCT

Hammersmith and Fulham Primary Care Trust (PCT) is the NHS organisation responsible for providing and commissioning healthcare for people living and working in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. Our aim is to improve the health of local residents by providing access to high quality health services and encouraging people to make healthy lifestyle choices (for example stopping smoking, eating a healthy diet and taking regular exercise).

All media enquiries should be directed to the Press and Communications department on:
tel: 020 8846 6572
fax: 020 8846 7961
[9] tom.stevenson@hf-pct.nhs.uk

Travelling abroad? Text your country destination to 0780 0000 573 and find out if you may be at risk of contracting Malaria (not a premium rate service - texts are charged at standard rate according to network provider)

Britons travelling abroad to exotic destinations are now able to receive immediate and free travel health information regarding malaria thanks to a new text messaging service developed by mobile healthcare specialist iPLATO. The service, funded by GlaxoSmithKline Travel Health as part of the Malaria Awareness Campaign, allows travellers to text in the name of their destination country to receive relevant information about the malaria prevalence in that country.

Despite the fact that malaria is a preventable disease every year approximately 2,000 British travellers return home with malaria, making the UK one of the biggest importers of malaria among industrialised countries. It is hoped that by making it easier for travellers to access important health advice via their mobile phone that this number will be reduced. The service is designed so that once a traveller has been informed about the level of malaria risk at their destination they will be encouraged to contact a healthcare professional for expert advice on protection. Travellers using the service are charged their standard operator rates and the service is available over all networks.

Malaria is a risk for British travellers as people increasingly visit countries where malaria is common; there has been a 150% increase in travel to malarious destinations amongst British travellers in the last 10 years. The humble mosquito may be tiny, but it only takes one bite from an infected mosquito to transmit this potentially deadly disease.

“We are delighted with using the mobile channel in helping people correctly assessing the malaria risk at their destinations”, says Tobias Alpsten, Managing Director iPLATO. “Early reports on the volume of text interactions by travellers using the Malaria Advice Service during the month of May alone validate the usefulness of this service and its potentially life saving benefits. We hope that frequent travellers will save this phone number and consult this service whenever they have to.”

If you are travelling abroad and would like to use the service, please text the name of your destination country to 078 000 000 573 and you will receive the text response with further information. This is not a Premium Rate Service and you will be charged according the standard text message rate set by your network provider.

About the Malaria Awareness Campaign

The Malaria Awareness Campaign - supported by celebrities including John Craven, Simon Reeve, Bear Grylls and Rageh Omaar - is now in its fourth year. Sponsored by GlaxoSmithKline Travel Health and supported by a leading panel of healthcare professionals, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA), it aims to encourage travellers to be malaria aware and seek expert medical advice before their journey. For more information on malaria visit: [10] www.malariahotspots.co.uk

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GP surgeries using iPLATO text messaging have discovered innovative ways of using the system to improve patient compliance to the childhood immunisation schedule. The long periods between booster injections often result in children missing important jabs.

Early results have shown that sending targeted text reminders to parents and guardians of children being vaccinated, vastly increases appointment attendance and compliance of these patients.

Stuart Hall, Practice IT Manager from the Vale Medical Centre, Lewisham PCT in South London, who has been using the iPLATO system for the last year, said that his surgery was keen to look at ways of managing patient compliance in this area. “We were able to put together a list of children that were overdue for their specific jab and whose parents had not responded to letters sent out previously. Using the iPLATO system, we sent a targeted text message to these parents asking them to call the surgery to book an appointment for their child’s missed vaccination. The result of this text campaign was overwhelmingly positive, with more than half of the parents phoning the surgery in response to the text alert, to schedule a new appointment” comments Hall.

Immunisation is a means of actively protecting a child against serious disease. Once children have been vaccinated, their immune system can fight off any diseases they have been vaccinated for. If a child misses a vaccination, however, they will remain at risk from catching that specific disease. If the level of compliance to an immunisation schedule within a population decreases, then the number of children at risk of catching a disease increases and, as a result, outbreaks of the disease are more likely to occur.

Tobias Alpsten, iPLATO Managing Director said, “The aim of our technology is to simplify and automate many of the processes that healthcare professionals are faced with. Improving patient compliance can be hugely burdensome especially when dealing with large groups of patients. iPLATO’s text messaging system aims to help surgeries engage with their patients around compliance in a manner which is not only cost effective but also personalised and immediate.”

iPLATO Patient Care Messaging is the only system to integrate with all major GP Administration Systems and is currently used in over 100 surgeries across 20 Primary Care Trusts in England.

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GP surgeries in Islington have found that using text messaging for smoking cessation campaigns (getting smokers to quit) is six times more effective than traditional ways of contacting patients. Leading Islington practices using the iPLATO text messaging system have reported patient response rates of 30% (versus a response rate of 5% using letters). By isolating patients on their GP system, surgeries can send out a text message asking patients to text back their current smoking status. Patients who indicate that they are still smokers and trying to quit are then invited to smoking cessation clinics.

“We sent a text message to 200 patients telling them that we were updating their medical record and asked - ‘pls. text back current non smoker; smoker & are you ready to quit?’; any patients indicating that they were still smoking were invited for smoking cessation support”, explains Charlotte Blyth, Practice Manager at the Elizabeth Avenue Surgery. She continues, “Using letters and even calling up patients to invite them to the surgery is a huge drain on surgery resources and staff time. With the iPLATO system we can contact hundreds of patients instantly without having to stuff a single envelope. Many of our own surgery staff were amazed at the rapid response, as the majority of patients responded within minutes. If we had run the same campaign using letters we would generally have to wait a few days to get any response.”

To put this initiative into perspective, 33.5% of the adult population in Islington smoke, compared to 26.5% in North Central London and 27.5% in England as a whole. Approximately 39 people per 10,000 die of smoking related causes in Islington, a rate higher than other boroughs in North Central London and London as a whole. Any means of reducing these numbers must be embraced and iPLATO Patient Care Messaging clearly fits this purpose.

David Thomas Head of Information at Islington Primary Care Trust who has led the expansion of the iPLATO text messaging service said, “Text messaging has a huge role to play in the way surgeries communicate with their patients, the immediacy and convenience of this medium has been illustrated by the positive results experienced by many of our surgeries. Islington PCT is dedicated to using innovative technologies to enhance patient services while giving patient greater choice in the way in which they receive health information; we see text messaging as one of the technologies.”

iPLATO’s Managing Director, Tobias Alpsten agrees with David Thomas saying “Over the years we have seen surgeries use our text messaging system to develop a relationship with their patients. Being able to offer support to patients trying to quit smoking in a way that makes them feel comfortable has a great impact on the success of such campaigns. iPLATO is the leading supplier of mobile healthcare solutions to GP surgeries in the U.K, we are committed to sharing best practice and encourage surgeries throughout our user base to use the mobile channel as a way to engage with their patients more effectively.”

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Notes for Editors:

About Islington PCT

Islington PCT is responsible for all primary and community healthcare services for the Islington population. Primary care includes pharmacists, dentists, opticians and family doctors. Community care includes the provision of services such as health visits and district nursing. Islington is one of the most diverse boroughs in London. It has a highly mobile population with poor standards of health.