NHS Tower Hamlets uses text messaging to boost attendance rate for Cervical Screening.

[1]

London, 19 August, 2010 - Eligible patients in NHS Tower Hamlets will soon be benefiting from receiving SMS invitations for cervical screening from their GP surgeries. Free to receive for the patient, the reminder service is fully funded by the PCT. All GP surgeries will use the secure and NHS approved iPLATO Patient Care Messaging system to streamline this communication.

According to the NHS, 900 women die from cervical cancer in England each year. It is therefore crucial to have a screening as it can help pick up changes in the cells of the cervix which could lead to cancer. Cancer Research UK estimates that up to 4,500 lives can be saved each year in England by having a cervical screening.

Experts agree that it is vital that patients are made aware of cervical screening service. Another challenge is to change attitudes towards smear tests within certain patient demographics and locations. This can be met with effective patient communication which is a key component in the PCT’s strategy to reach the national target.

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About NHS Tower Hamlets

The aim is to improve the health of local people living in Tower Hamlets in east London. The PCT wants to reduce inequalities in health and modernise services for local people. This can be achieved through assessing the health needs of our communities, commissioning services from hospital trusts and other local organisations, and by providing a range of services ourselves.Bottom of Form

Sandwell Primary Care Trust Innovates to Increase Child Immunisation Uptake

London, August 9^th, 2010 - Sandwell Primary Care Trust will soon introduce text messaging as an innovative and practical means of reminding parents of children under the age 5 to attend immunisation clinics. Using the NHS approved iPLATO Patient Care Messaging system combined with immunisation records on their GP system, the GP surgeries will send SMS reminders asking parents to book an appointment for their child’s immunisation jabs.

Having children immunised is the most effective way to protect them from serious diseases such as Pneumococcal, Meningitis C, Measles, Mumps and Rubella. As a parent, you may not like seeing your baby or child being given an injection. However, vaccination is an important step in protecting your child against a range of serious and potentially fatal diseases. Vaccinations are quick, safe and extremely effective. Once your child has been vaccinated against a disease, their body can fight that disease more effectively if they come into contact with it. If a child is not vaccinated, they will be at increased risk of catching the illness.

Based on iPLATO experiences in other parts of the country this new service will increase immunisation uptake which is seen as key to avoid hospitalisation due to children catching any of the serious diseases they should immunised against. As the mobile channel is inexpensive and convenient it will also improve patient satisfaction and reduce communication costs.

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About Sandwell Primary Care TrustTop of Form

Sandwell Primary Care Trust is at the heart of the local NHS in Sandwell. It was formed in October 2006 following the merger of three Primary Care Trusts: Oldbury & Smethwick, Rowley Regis & Tipton and Wednesbury & West Bromwich Primary Care Trusts.

It serves a local registered population of approximately 320,000 and enables people in Sandwell to access healthcare, treatment and advice, health promotion advice and guidance and support for carers.

iPLATO awarded National Telecare, Telehealth and Telecoaching framework agreement

London, August 4th 2010. iPLATO Healthcare announced today that the company has been awarded a framework agreement for Assistive Technologies which includes Telecare, Telehealth and Telecoaching products and services. This is good news for NHS organisations and Local Authorities across the country that will now be able to purchase products and services from an online catalogue under pre-agreed terms and conditions, managed by Buying Solutions.

Already working with over 700 healthcare providers in more than 50 Primary Care Trusts and Health Boards, iPLATO’s mHealth solutions have proven to transform patient services and reduce health inequalities across populations. The company’s evidence based offerings include wellness, diagnosis, behavioural change and long term condition management solutions. This listing means that a specialised mHealth offering is represented in procurement lists at national level for the first time.

“We are delighted that we have been awarded a place on the national framework agreement” says Tobias Alpsten, Managing Director at iPLATO. “mHealth is a sub-set of Assistive Technologies that runs across telehealthcare and telecoaching. As a result, our offering complements rather than competes with traditional Assistive Technology propositions. We are looking forward to working with other suppliers on the framework agreement to put together holistic, community-wide, remote care solutions. Fundamentally, we think patients and tax payers are the real winners here because this award will help our NHS and Local Authority partners launch patient centric mHealth services faster by avoiding lengthy procurement processes. In times like these, it is refreshing to know that iPLATO’s solutions deliver immediate bottom-line improvements as well as health and care outcomes. We deliver service transformation - not simply technology. Our approach includes business process redesign, technology development and change management.”

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About Buying Solutions
Buying Solutions is the national procurement partner for all UK public services and is part of the Efficiency and Reform Group within the Cabinet Office.Its role is to deliver best value for customers in central government and the wider public sector through the efficient procurement and supply of essential goods and services.

Buying Solutions saves its customers time, money and effort by providing access to trusted, compliant, and sustainable procurement solutions, which deliver measurable savings, value for money and peace of mind.

Contact:
Buying Solutions Press Office
Tel: 0345 410 2222
Email: [2] pressoffice@buyingsolutions.gsi.gov.uk
Web: [3] www.buyingsolutions.gov.uk

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NHS Bristol fights Smoking with iPLATO Healthcare

[14] London, 05 November 2009, Bristol residents have been benefiting from receiving GP Appointment Reminders and Health Promotion information on their mobile phones via text message. Over 90% of GP Surgeries in NHS Bristol signed up for the iPLATO text messaging solution to address important public health concerns, in particular smoking prevalence, via GP-led SMS Health Promotion campaigns.

NHS Bristol offered the iPLATO Patient Care Messaging (PCM) platform to their GP surgeries after evaluating the benefits of using mobile technology as a targeted and highly responsive way of engaging with smokers. Where PCM has been used in PCT’s elsewhere, an effective communication channel for health information has been established.

More than half of the surgeries in NHS Bristol participated in this campaign. They reached, on average, an amazing 73% delivery rate to their target group. The surgeries also achieved an average 50% response rate, which is extremely high when compared to other forms of direct marketing.

The iPLATO Patient Care Messaging system works by integrating with the GPs’ clinical system where patient records are stored. Surgeries can use the clinical information they hold to target SMS supported Health Promotion text campaigns to specific patient groups.

All the participating surgeries in NHS Bristol using iPLATO’s Patient Care Messaging for these Smoking Cessation initiatives, are receiving comprehensive support from iPLATO’s Outcome Delivery Team, ensuring all GP surgeries benefit from both the experience and best practice techniques gained through the support of similar initiatives elsewhere in the UK.

Sue Roberts, Information Governance Manager, Southmead and Henbury Family Practice, NHS Bristol said, “We decided to use iPLATO text messaging solution because it has proven to be a successful means to support smoking initiatives in other surgeries. We are committed to using every way possible to help our population to quit smoking and this innovative service does that. We have also found that this service has the potential of saving time and administration costs.”

To achieve optimal uptake of this free service, surgeries encourage their patients to hand in and update their mobile contact details. With an estimated 85% of the UK adult population owning a mobile phone, the participating surgeries have the opportunity to reach a significant number of their population through this scheme.

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Notes for Editors:

About NHS Bristol

NHS Bristol responsible for local NHS health services in Bristol, UK, taking over from the previous Bristol South and West and Bristol North PCTs. We cover a population of around 400,000 and have a budget of over £600 million. Services include GP practices, pharmacies, dentists, opticians, a range of community nursing and therapy services are supplied by Bristol Community Health. We also refund the NHS hospitals when you are treated in them.

Press contact:
Lawrie Jones
[15] Lawrie.jones@bristolpct.nhs.uk

SMS has major role to play for Swine Flu vaccination during postal strike

London, 26^th October 2009. From today GPs will be receiving deliveries of the Pandemrix vaccine and will begin contacting ‘at risk’ groups for Swine Flu vaccination appointments.

It was recently reported that there are fears that the backlog of post following the current Royal Mail strikes will affect the programme, resulting in ‘at risk’ groups missing their appointments and therefore delaying getting their vaccination. Sir Liam Donaldson, the chief medical officer has warned that thousands of people could miss appointments for their swine flu vaccine due to these postal strikes.

In response to this difficult situation, the Department of Health is now actively encouraging GPs and hospitals to use alternative methods of communication to combat the current limitations of the Royal Mail service. Text messaging is seen as a method that could play a key role in ensuring the maximum number of ‘at risk’ patients are engaged with. It has also been reported that a number of doctors are already considering sending text messages to patients to invite them for the swine flu vaccination rather than letters.

Text messaging has proven itself to be an extremely effective and immediate way to contact ‘at risk’ groups of patients, when used for the support of health promotion initiatives such as Smoking Cessation and seasonal Flu. As such, it is a resource that if used to engage with target groups relevant for Swine Flu, could make a real difference, especially if communication via the mail service remains problematic. When compared to other methods of patient engagement, text messaging consistently proves to be a considerably cheaper and more responsive communication channel than other options available (letters, landline call etc).

iPLATO’s flagship text messaging platform, Patient Care Messaging (PCM), is currently being used by GPs across 43 Primary Care Trusts. As a result, the iPLATO network of users represents a very significant resource to be called on in an emergency such as this.

The iPLATO service is a web based text messaging system hosted within NHSnet that integrates to all major GP administration systems, allowing fully automated appointment reminders and targeted group messaging. Patients can respond via text if they wish, with replies being automatically forwarded to a pre-assigned email address. With an estimated 82% of the UK population owning a mobile phone, it is anticipated surgeries will be able to reach a significant number of their patients in this way.

iPLATO are currently actively engaging with their network of PCTs and GPs to highlight the potential of SMS GP-led Swine Flu vaccine invitations.

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Greenwich patients benefit from text messages from their GPs

[16] 22 October 2009. Patients of GP practices in Greenwich will soon benefit from receiving text messages to support health promotion and patient ‘access’. NHS Greenwich has recently funded iPLATO Patient Care Messaging for 39 Greenwich surgeries. This new text messaging service aims to provide an effective communication channel for the support of health promotion campaigns such as Stop Smoking and also help reduce the number of missed GP appointments, by automated appointment reminders.

The iPLATO service has proved to reduce missed GP appointments in General Practice by between 26% and 40%, and has proven to be a highly effective and efficient method of when used to promote Public Health services.

The iPLATO service allows healthcare providers to engage with smokers through their mobile phones, rather than traditional methods of broadcasting population-wide messages via posters or adverts. By taking this approach, the PCT expects to significantly and cost effectively increase the number of people seeking support from the Stop Smoking Services.

From searches made on their GP system, surgeries can send out a text message asking patients to text back if they smoke or not. Patients who receive this message can text back their response by a reply text, received by the GP surgery as an email to a designated surgery email address. All patients identified as smokers can then be sent an additional text message inviting them to Smoking Cessation support and advice.

With an estimated 82% of the UK adult population owning a mobile phone, surgeries will be able to reach a significant number of their patients through this scheme. To achieve optimal uptake of the service, surgeries can encourage their patients to hand in their mobile contact details for their records to be updated.

Julie Richardson, Head of GP Support & Delivery at Greenwich PCT said, “We are excited to be offering this service to our patients. Anything that can help bridge the gap between the healthcare provider and patient we see as a positive. Using this system to request information from patients and as a way to invite patients to healthcare services is proving to be very helpful”.

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Notes for Editors:

About Greenwich PCT:

NHS Greenwich is the lead organisation for the NHS in Greenwich and is responsible for commissioning the health services needed by local people.

We will significantly improve health solutions and reduce health inequalities across Greenwich so that local people feel positive about the care and support they experience from the services we commission.

We know that we need to tailor health solutions to suit the health needs of the local population and we will provide knowledgeable, strong and high profile leadership to deliver this vision.

NHS Greenwich is committed to building and strengthening partnerships with other commissioners and providers who can help us - and we will prioritise tasks and activities that are likely to have the most impact on delivering this vision.

PCT Contact:
Claire Small
020 8293 6772
[17] claire.small@greenwichpct.nhs.uk

NHS Hammersmith and Fulham fight smoking with text messaging service

[18] London, 8^th October 2009, An innovative scheme to use mobile technology to obtain a patient’s current smoking status and invite ‘quitters’ for Smoking Cessation services, has proved a great success in NHS Hammersmith and Fulham. NHS Hammersmith and Fulham have a smoking prevalence of 24.2% and are committed to cutting that number down every year.

The recent scheme using iPLATO Patient Care Messaging, requested a patient’s smoking status via text message. Patients could respond via reply text - all patient replies being converted to an email and sent back to the relevant surgery email address. Once identified as a smoker, the patients could then be sent an additional text message inviting them to enrol in Stop Smoking programmes. The results were presented this year at the UK National Smoking Cessation Conference (UKNSCC).

22 GP surgeries sent out a request for a patient’s smoking status via text message. The surgeries received 6,085 valid smoking status responses. Some of the top performing surgeries received as high as 57% valid response rates - 95% of those responses received within 24 hours of sending the original message.

After confirming smoking status, the surgeries sent out another text, to enrol smokers in quit programmes. This message invited smokers to text ‘quit’ to be contacted by a member of the local stop smoking team.

Another way NHS Hammersmith and Fulham have reached out to smokers is by producing posters to be hung up around their borough. These posters direct patients to text ‘QUIT’ to a designated number printed on a poster, members of the public that text in to the designated ‘trigger’ number are subsequently contacted by the local Stop Smoking Service. The posters also give an option of a number to call if the ‘quitter’ does not want to text in. The iPLATO supported poster campaign ran for 6 months and generated 282 responses via text and approximately 300 by phone.

These initiatives have proved considerably more effective than traditional ways of obtaining information and reaching out to ‘smokers’. The cost savings possible with this approach has also proven to be compelling, when compared to the cost of previous methods employed for similar ends.

Tim Roberts Stop-Smoking Manager, NHS Hammersmith and Fulham said, “This way of reaching out to smokers to help them quit is not only effective but very fast, because of this, text messaging is an essential component in the promotion of stop smoking services.”

iPLATO Patient Care Messaging is increasingly being funded by PCTs for GP surgeries across the UK and is being used to address important Public Health concerns such as CVD, Smoking, Sexual

Health, Flu, Childhood Immunisations and Obesity. The system works by integrating with the GPs’ clinical system where patient records are stored. GP surgeries can search the clinical information they hold on their clinical systems to target specific groups of patients for SMS health promotion campaigns.

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About NHS Hammersmith and Fulham:

Hammersmith and Fulham Primary Care Trust (PCT) is the NHS organisation responsible for 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).

NHS Hammersmith and Fulham contact
Press and Communications Department
Tel: 020 3313 7226
[19] communications@hf-pct.nhs.uk

iPLATO Champion Wanted!

Patient Care Messaging is being used successfully by GP surgeries to support both health promotion initiatives such as Smoking Cessation, Flu Jab, Cancer Screening etc. as well as ‘Access’ initiatives via our system’s automated appointment reminders.

BUT…

Patient Care Messaging can only send a message to a patient if you have a mobile number recorded for them…

iPLATO Champion Award Details

The iPLATO Champion Award competition is aimed at encouraging GP surgeries to collect mobile numbers to support the above benefits being achieved.

If you would like

to participate in this competition please follow the steps below:

RULES:

By filling in the form below, surgeries can register for the iPLATO Champion Award (awarded to a winning surgery every 2 months).
The surgery that achieves the largest increase in mobile numbers recorded on their administration system (as a %) over the relevant 2 month period will win an iPLATO Champion Award (Champion for 2 Months only!).
The two month period will start December 1^st, February 1^st, April 1^st, June 1^st, August 1^stand October 1^st..
Entry for the competition will be 3 weeks before the next 2 month evaluation period.
Any entries after each 3 week period will not be counted toward the current 2 month ‘Champion’ evaluation period but will be added into the next two month evaluation period.
Our winners will be announced in our newsletter.
Multiple entrees to this competition is permissible.

PRIZES:

The winning surgery will get:

A £150 voucher (from a choice of Selfridges, John Lewis or Marks and Spencer!)

£50 gift certificate to MagazineSubscription.co.uk for you and/or your patients to choose new magazines for your surgery waiting room (subscription for a year).

As the patients play a role in helping you win (by providing you with their numbers!!) We recommend letting the patients know about this offer, as it may help encourage them to help you collect their mobile numbers to win these magazines for the waiting room.

Please see below a PDF’d poster for you to download and put up in your waiting room to remind patients to hand in their mobile numbers and help you win!

[20] [View Poster]

Good Luck!

GP Surgeries in Camden use Text Messaging Services

Camden, London, 24 September 2009 - Patients of GP practices in Camden are benefitting from receiving appointment reminders and health information to their mobiles phones via text message. NHS Camden recently funded their surgeries to launch and operate the healthcare specific text messaging platform iPLATO Patient Care Messaging. The new patient service aims to reduce non-attendance to appointments as well as informing about important NHS services such as cancer screening and immunisation.

According to Imperial College researchers, non-attendance to appointments cost the NHS - and the tax payer - more than £790 million per year *. The iPLATO system has proven to reduce non-attendance in general practice by between 26% and 40%. In addition to reaping financial benefits through increased efficiency, NHS Camden hopes to establish an effective communication channel for health information.

With an estimated 82% of the UK adult population owning a mobile phone, participating surgeries will be able to reach a significant number of their patients through this scheme. Text messages are free to receive for the patient. If patients choose to respond, they will be charged standard operator rates depending on their individual contract. To achieve optimal uptake of and the subsequent benefits of this service, surgeries encourage their patients to hand in their mobile contact details for their records to be updated.

Peppy Begueria, Deputy Practice Manager of Prince of Wales Group Practice in NHS Camden said, “We are delighted with the text service. It has definitely reduced our DNAs (did not attend) by a substantial amount. Patients often comment on how helpful it is that they are reminded of their appointments by text. We would definitely recommend this service.”

Kevin Hunter, Clinical Standards & Governance Manager at NHS Camden said, “Patient Care Messaging is the way forward in Camden. We have an ethnically and socially diverse population and many of them use mobile phones. I believe that text message reminders for patient’s appointments are the perfect first step towards building a ‘mobile relationship’. We aim to reduce missed appointments and look forward to using this service to support population wide health promotion initiatives”.

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Notes for Editors:

* Imperial College research article- Effectiveness of mobile-phone short message service (SMS) reminders for ophthalmology outpatient appointments: Observational study

Elizabeth Koshy, Josip Car and Azeem Majeed

About NHS Camden:

NHS Camden is the local NHS organisation responsible for providing healthcare for people who live in the borough of Camden - a population of about 220,000 people. We commission or pay for services from a wide range of health providers, including GPs, dentists, opticians and community pharmacies, acute trusts and mental health trusts. We are also responsible for supporting the local population of Camden to maximise health by promoting healthy lifestyles for example through services like the stop smoking service and sensible drinking service.

NHS Camden Contact:
Sonia Amos
[21] sonia.amos@camdenpct.nhs.uk

iPLATO chosen in Tech Media Invest Top 100 list

London, 7^th September 2009, iPLATO has earned a place in the Tech Media Invest Top 100. This is a list of the hottest emerging and most innovative companies in the ever converging tech and media industries.

The Top 100 list was revealed today by Europe-Unlimited, Europe’s leading event organisers for investors and technology companies, in association with The Guardian, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Kemp Little.

The Tech Media Invest 100 aims to showcase young entrepreneurial companies that are developing innovative new ways to serve business and consumers, and have the potential to radically change the shape of the technology and media industry. The Tech Media Invest Advisory Board felt iPLATO (along with other companies) was an example of the kind of company that may go on to be the leaders of tomorrow.

“Being on the Media Tech Top 100 list is confirmation of the emergence of iPLATO as an exciting business across the innovation spectrum”, said Tobias Alpsten Managing Director of iPLATO Healthcare. “Our company provides powerful new services that really make a difference to patients and healthcare professionals around the country. As a unique proposition, our mobile health services deliver measurable health benefits to patients, but they also deliver significant cost savings, making them a valuable choice in the midst of financial challenges for the NHS. iPLATO has more than doubled in size over the last six months, so this popularity is not exactly news to the thousands of healthcare professionals and millions of patients we work with every day. What is new is us emerging as an exciting proposition compared to growth businesses across sectors beyond healthcare.”

The Tech Media Invest Advisory Board deployed a detailed process to whittle down a pool of eligible, promising companies to get to the top 100 winners. Evaluations were made on both quantitative and qualitative criteria, such as financial performance, innovation, management, global strategy, and ecosystem integration. The results were moderated by the Board which consisted of some of the UK’s most experienced investors in modern technology and media - a mix of venture capitalists, investment analysts, professional advisers and technology lawyers, who applied their expertise to identify the best performers and the ones to watch.

For information on companies go to [22] www.e-unlimited.com/tmi

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Notes for Editors:

Europe-Unlimited

Founded in 1998, privately-owned Europe Unlimited supplies critical business intelligence to innovative technology entrepreneurs, corporations, investors and researchers throughout Europe. Our online community provides a platform to exchange knowledge and to facilitate networking at our pan-European venture events. Over the past decade, our activities have helped thousands of start-ups in finding partners and raising capital. Next to the UK Tech Media 100, we compile the Nordic Venture 50 and the Benelux Venture 50 rankings for the most promising start-ups in these regions, and identify Europe’s leading startups through the Eurecan European Venture Contest, now in its fifth year.

Europe Unlimited coordinated the selection of the UK Tech Media 100 and will organise the forthcoming Tech Media Invest 2009 taking place on October 1^st at the Emirates Stadium.

[23] www.e-unlimited.com

GP Surgeries use SMS to advise Patients on Swine Flu

London, 5^th August 2009, GP Surgeries in Camden are successfully sending out text messages advising patients on what to do if they think they have Swine Flu.

The GP surgeries are some of the first to use text messaging as a way to help people deal with the Swine Flu pandemic. The iPLATO Patient Care Messaging service, which is being used by the surgeries to send out the Swine Flu related text messages, was originally funded by the PCT to improve efficiency and performance across a range of healthcare areas.

This use of the iPLATO platform to communicate Swine Flu specific information is a great way to use the text messaging channel - which has proved to be both a highly responsive and by definition ‘personal’ method of GP Surgery/Patient communication. Furthermore, the system allows information to be targeted to specific patient groups that most need it, allowing patients to text back a reply (as appropriate) arriving at the surgery as an email to a predefined email address.

The Camden surgeries sent out a text message advising patients on the best steps to take should they suspect that they (or a family member) might be showing the symptoms of Swine Flu. The messages were aimed at encouraging patients to phone a flu pandemic line first rather than call or visit their surgery. It also provided an opportunity to signpost patients to a relevant website to access further Swine Flu specific information.

The Chief Medical Officer, Professor Sir Liam Donaldson, has said that in the worst case scenario 30% of the UK population could be infected by the H1N1 virus, with 65,000 killed. By using every available communication channel to update patients on what to do if they think they have Swine Flu, Healthcare Provider Organisations can potentially greatly decrease the impact of the Swine Flu pandemic.

The Camden GP surgeries are certainly leading the way by seeking to utilise all their resources and demonstrating best practice by using the iPLATO text messaging service in this way. Since sending out the message the surgeries have had less Swine Flu patients coming into the surgery in person and more patients calling up instead as advised.

The use of the iPLATO system in this way has shown how effective the text messaging channel can be in a pandemic scenario. The more the population is educated about Swine Flu the better, and with GP users across 40+ PCTs, the iPLATO platform could play a very significant role in support of this.

Sandra Anderson, Senior Administrator of the Rosslyn Hill Practice in NHS Camden said, “Since sending out the message it has eased pressure off our surgery. Patients are calling in and getting advice about Swine Flu instead of coming into the surgery in person. It’s important to contact patients by all means possible when it comes to a pandemic and we are very happy to have iPLATO Patient Care Messaging to help us do that. Since so many of our patients have mobiles, text messaging is the best way to contact them quickly.”

Jeff Mitchell, IT Manager of the James Wigg Practice in NHS Camden said, “Using the text messaging service to reach 8,500 patients led to an immediate decrease in the volume of calls concerning swine flu and an increase the hits on our website where we provide Q&A for the patient. We know people are very concerned about Swine Flu and we want them to know what to do if they think they are infected. Many of our patients have mobile phones and text is a great way to send out a message instantly.”

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North London Community Dermatology Service Reminding Patients of Appointments via Text Messaging

London, 17 July 2009 - The North London Community Dermatology Service (NLCDS), which started 1^st July 2008 and based at The Royal Free Hospital Hampstead, are now benefiting from receiving appointment reminders to their mobiles phones via text message on an ongoing basis. The NLCDS have started using the iPLATO Patient Care Messaging (PCM) system in line with an increasing trend to utilise mobile technology to efficiently communicate with out-patients.

The iPLATO text messaging service will be used to automatically send appointment reminders to the mobile phones of the relevant out-patients. On receiving a message, the out-patient can reply via text - all replies being routed as an email to a predetermined email address. The service also benefits from sophisticated reporting functionality, enabling users to manage all aspects of the system effectively.

Like many NHS organisation, the NLCDS is keen to reduce ‘Did not attend’ (DNA) rates and improve patient Access. The cost savings and increased efficiency possible with this approach makes projects of this nature very timely given the current economic downturn.

According to Imperial College researchers, non-attendance to appointments cost the NHS - and the tax payer - more than £750 million per year. The iPLATO system has proven to reduce non-attendance in General Practice by between 26% and 40%. In addition to reaping financial benefits through increased efficiency, health services can establish an effective communication channel for health information.

With an estimated 82% of the UK adult population owning a mobile phone, iPLATO PCM users will be able to reach a significant number of their patients through this scheme. Text messages are free to receive for the patient. If patients choose to respond, they will be charged standard operator rates depending on their individual contract. To achieve optimal uptake of and the subsequent benefits of this service, patients are encouraged to hand in their mobile contact details for their records to be updated.

Dr. Nirmin Patel, Interim Service Manager, North London Community Dermatology Service said, “The system is very useful for reminding patients about their appointments, especially as many patients forget about their appointments due to long lead times and misplace their original appointment letters. Reminding them the week before and also two days before their appointment is a great way of ensuring that they attend and gives them ample time to cancel it. The reporting feature on the system is also a very useful tool for identifying mobile numbers that are incorrect so that patient information can be updated.”

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Notes for Editors:

About The Royal Free Hospital

The Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust has around 900 beds and sees about 700,000 patients a year from all over the world . We employ around 4,600 people and have a turnover of about £450m.

Our services include a major accident and emergency service, all branches of surgery and medicine, a renal service serving the whole of north London, paediatrics, maternity services, care of elderly people, an adolescent psychiatric service and one of two high security infectious diseases units in the country.

We are renowned for our specialist services including liver, kidney and bone marrow transplantation, renal, AIDS/HIV, infectious diseases, plastic surgery, immunology, paediatric gastroenterology, ENT surgery and audiological medicine, amyloidosis and scleroderma. We are a leading cancer centre with a range of specialist diagnostic and treatment services in oncology and haematology and a major neuroscience base with a network extending throughout north London and into the Home Counties. There are associated internationally recognised research and training programmes.

The hospitals and associated medical school conduct medical research, much of which is of international status, and constitute a leading site for the training of doctors, nurses, midwives and professions allied to medicine.

Press Contact:
Philippa Hutchinson
Head of Communications
[24] Philippa.Hutchinson@royalfree.nhs.uk

GP Surgeries in Wirral to use Text Messaging Services

Wirral, England, 15 July 2009 - Patients of GP practices in Wirral are benefiting from receiving appointment reminders and health information to their mobiles phones via text message.

NHS Wirral has recently funded participating surgeries to launch and operate a Patient Care Messaging service, which aims to inform patients about NHS services, such as cancer screening and immunisation, to reduce the number of people who do not turn up to their appointments.

According to recent research, non-attendance to appointments cost the NHS - and the tax payer - more than £750 million per year. The text message system, called iPLATO Patient Care Messaging, has proven to reduce non-attendance in General Practice by between 26% and 40%. In addition to saving money which can be best used for patient care, NHS Wirral hopes to provide patients with useful health information through this communication channel.

With an estimated 82% of the UK adult population owning a mobile phone, iPLATO Patient Care Messaging aims to reach a significant number of NHS patients. Text messages are free to receive for the patient. If patients choose to respond, they will be charged standard operator rates depending on their individual contract. Participating GP Practices will be asking patients if they are willing to record their mobile contact details for those who wish to benefit from service.

Barbara Dunton, Deputy Head of Bebington and West Wirral Locality, NHS Wirral, said: “Mobile patient services have proven that they are cost effective and scalable and are, therefore, the way forward in Wirral. We have a diverse population of patients registered with GPs and many already use mobiles to run their daily lives.” She continues, “NHS Wirral chose iPLATO for its long experience in UK primary care. This system of messaging is functional and secure. It improves service without adding extra work for healthcare staff and links with existing systems used by GPs to book appointments and clinics.”

Anna Commander of the Leasowe Surgery in Twickenham Drive, said: “I absolutely love having the system in the surgery and it has saved so much time. The Appointment reminders are very successful and I have also been able to send SMS messages notifying patients of extended hours over the holiday periods and a surgery open day.”

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Notes for Editors:

About NHS Wirral:

NHS Wirral is the local Primary Care Trust (PCT) for Wirral. PCTs first came into being in April 2000. Since their time their role has developed to design, plan and develop better services for patients, ensuring that we get the best value for your money. Your PCT will work with local authorities and other agencies that provide health and social care locally to make sure that your local community’s needs are being met. PCTs are now at the centre of the NHS. As they are local organisations, they are in the best position to understand the needs of their community, so they can make sure that the organisations providing health and social care services are working effectively. For example, your PCT must make sure there are enough services for people within their area and that these services are accessible. They must also make sure that all other health services are provided, including hospitals, dentists, opticians, mental health services, NHS Walk-In Centres, NHS Direct, patient transport (including Accident & Emergency), population screening, pharmacies and opticians. They are also responsible for getting health and social care systems working together to the benefit of patients.

NHS Wirral Press Contact:
Philip Rostance
Senior Communications Manager
0151 651 3908

SMS messaging can help NHS to go ‘green’

With Earth Day on the 21^st of April, the increasing adoption of iPLATO’s text messaging system, Patient Care Messaging, by NHS organisations across the UK for health promotion initiatives and GP appointment reminders is proving to be a great way of creating a ‘greener’ NHS.

By implementing the iPLATO system, many NHS healthcare provider organisations have been able to provide an alternative communication ‘channel’ to paper and mail services.

Users of the iPLATO system are achieving a significant decrease in the use of paper and mail services (a key contributor of CO2 emissions in the NHS), as a result of using the ‘two-way’ SMS system for a proportion of their healthcare provider/patient communication.

Compared to paper and mail services, the use of text messaging is a significantly ‘greener’ option. The NHS is responsible for 3.2% of all carbon emissions and 25% of Public Sector emissions in England.

The NHS could significantly reduce their ‘primary and secondary footprint’ (a measure of the direct and indirect CO2 emissions from the whole lifecycle of products that the NHS uses) by the wide adoption of SMS messaging technology to reduce the amount of paper and mail services used.

This approach could also have a major role to play when taking into account the challenge that the NHS faces in achieving the Government’s aim to cut carbon emissions in the NHS by 10% by 2015 and by 80% by 2050.

In addition to reducing the amount of paper and mail services used, text messaging can also reduce NHS costs considerably. When compared to sending a letter or calling a patient via a landline telephone (both activities requiring considerable time, cost and effort) for health promotion initiatives such as Smoking Cessation, the instantaneous and cheap nature of sending a text message is an excellent alternative.

Recent studies have also shown that the use of the iPLATO system for SMS supported health promotion has also delivered much higher patient response rates than traditionally achievable via existing methods of healthcare provider/patient communication (letters, landline telephone call etc.).

For all these reasons, text messaging can make a significant contribution to CO2 emission reduction and all round efficiency within the NHS.

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Text Messaging contributes to improved attendance for Breast Screening in Tower Hamlets

Recent results from a Tower Hamlets PCT text messaging campaign have shown that text messaging contributes to improved attendance for Breast Screening in Tower Hamlets. The iPLATO supported campaigns that ran throughout last summer were implemented alongside a number of tools and techniques to improve the rate of screening (e.g. posters campaigns, calling patients directly, well women clinics and focus groups), all designed to encourage women in Tower Hamlets PCT to attend their breast screening appointment.

A list provided by the Central & East London Breast Screening Service (CELBSS) was uploaded by the 9 participating GP surgeries who then sent out appointment reminders to selected patients reminding them to attend their breast screening appointment with the CELBSS screening service. Similar campaigns are also now being run in PCTs elsewhere in London.

Breast screening is a high priority 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. According to Cancer Research UK, new figures have revealed that women diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer following a routine screening appointment have the same lifespan as women who have never had the disease, highlighting the importance of women attending their breast screening appointment.

Maxine Khol, Practice Manager at Wapping Group Practice, said: “The iPLATO texting has been an excellent service to our patients; it helps very much with our non attendees, which then gives us the opportunity to offer more appointments. We also use the service for other clinics and recalls such as diabetic, blood pressure, flu clinics. We most certainly will be using this service for the foreseeable future”.

The PCT has already started new Breast Screening appointment reminder campaigns that will be run over the coming year.

Kay Eilbert, Senior Public Health Strategist at Tower Hamlets PCT said, “iPLATO offers an easy, inexpensive way of reminding women about their breast screening appointments”. She also added, “Text messaging could provide a key piece of the puzzle in our quest to improve screening coverage among hard to reach women.”

Funded centrally by the PCT, the service has been adopted by over 95% of Tower Hamlets GP surgeries and will be used to address important Public Health concerns such as Smoking and Breast Screening.

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Notes for Editor:

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:
Jacqueline Katz
Communications Manager
Tower Hamlets PCT
Tel. 020 7655 6685

Text Campaigns Support Sexual Health Initiatives in London

Increasing numbers of GP surgeries across London are opting to use the iPLATO text messaging capability to increase the uptake of self screening tests for Chlamydia. The iPLATO Patient Care Messaging system is being used to support initiatives aimed at addressing the dramatic increase of the infection, which according to the National Chlamydia Screening Programme (NCSP) could be affecting 1 in 10 people under the age of 25 who are sexually active.

From searches made on their GP systems, surgeries sent out a group text message to selected patients inviting them to call or visit their surgery to pick up or request a self test Chlamydia ‘pack’, patients taking the self test Chlamydia ‘pack’ will be asked to give a urine sample or alternatively women can take a swab from the lower vagina. The Chlamydia test is confidential, free, simple and painless.

Text messaging has been proven to be a successful way to contact ‘hard to reach’ patients, especially young adults. The use of text messaging to effectively invite young adults to GP surgeries to increase the uptake of Chlamydia self-testing has considerable potential. A recent study has proven that text messaging is an acceptable medium for communicating sexual health information to young people*.

Chlamydia is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the UK. The infection has no signs or symptoms, but if left untreated can cause several long-term health problems, such as permanent infertility. However, if diagnosed early, Chlamydia can be easily treated with a course of antibiotics.

Recent government modernisation strategy requirements for sexual health call for an expansion in the provision of Chlamydia screening. The NCSP aims to ensure that under 25s are aware of the risk of acquiring Chlamydia, its potential complications and have access to screening, prevention and treatment services.

Grace Kamel, Administration Co-ordinator at the Hampstead Group Practice in Camden PCT (one of the surgeries opting to adopt this SMS supported approach in London) said: “Getting hold of young adults for sexual health checkups is often difficult to do. The system makes it a lot easier.” She also added, ‘We decided to use texts messaging, because texting is very popular amongst young adults. The use of text messaging in this area is a really innovative idea - it’s immediate, convenient and non-intrusive.”

iPLATO Patient Care Messaging is increasingly being funded by PCTs across the UK and is being used to address important Public Health concerns such as Smoking, Flu, Childhood Immunisations and Obesity. The system works by integrating with the GPs’ clinical system where patient records are stored. GP surgeries can search the clinical information they hold on their clinical systems to target specific groups of patients for health promotion campaigns.

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*Alexa Wilkins and Donna B. Mak (2007), Sending out an SMS: an impact and outcome evaluation of the Western Australian Department of Health’s 2005 Chlamydia campaign, Health Promotion Journal of Australia;18:113-20

NOTES TO EDITOR

About Hampstead Group Practice in Camden PCT

The Hampstead Group Practice is a very busy, forward thinking and high achieving surgery serving a highly diverse population of over 10,500 patients in the Hampstead and Gospel Oak areas of Camden. We like to look at innovative ways to develop patient services and recognise that a lot of our patients have very busy lives.

Contact details
Grace Kamel
020 7433-3904

Childhood Immunisation via SMS in Southwark PCT

[25] GP surgeries in Southwark Primary Care Trust (PCT) have been using iPLATO’s text messaging solution to invite patients for their MMR jab and to alert parents of the recent measles outbreaks in local schools within the Borough. Southwark PCT decided to partner with mobile health promotion specialists iPLATO in response to an increase in the number of measles cases reported in Southwark over the last few months.

Every quarter, surgeries receive a list from the central system known as Open Exeter, which indicates all the children who are due their immunisation for the combined measles, mumps and rubella jab (MMR). By running a search on their clinical system, practices were able to send out a text message to a group of selected patients, who were due their first MMR or booster MMR jab, advising them to call the surgery to make an appointment.

Nicholas Christou, Practice Manager at The Hambleden Clinic said, “The iPLATO system has been a huge help, it has made it a lot easier to target parents asking them to call the surgery to book an appointment for their child’s vaccination”. He added, “We know mobile phones are used by a lot of our patients, so text messaging is an effective way to communicate with them.”

Southwark PCT aims to ensure that everybody under the age of 18 not previously vaccinated, receive both doses of the MMR Jab and that information is made available on how this service can be accessed. As part of the Southwark PCT campaign, iPLATO Patient Care Messaging was used to send text messages to parents of children under the age of 16, inviting them to contact the surgery to make an appointment. The iPLATO platform was also used to send messages to 16 -18 years olds, in order to invite those who have not been previously vaccinated with the MMR Jab, to text back to receive info on walk in clinics.

Measles cases have soared across England and Wales with 1,049 confirmed cases last year, surpassing the total of 990 cases in 2007. As a result of these alarming figures, the achievement of ‘herd immunity’ is a major priority for the NHS. The use of iPLATO Patient Care Messaging in Southwark PCT’s childhood immunisation campaigns has proven to be a very useful tool to support the PCT’s goal of achieving ‘herd immunity’.

Maxine Grimes, Primary Care Information Officer at Southwark PCT, said, “We chose to partner with iPLATO because the technology has proven to be a quick and successful method to engage with patients”. She also added, “We are very committed to helping increase the uptake of childhood immunisation, and pleased to offer this additional support to our surgeries, to expand and accelerate their efforts.”

This recent initiative forms part of a wider plan to utilise the text messaging channel for a variety of health promotion initiatives (such as Smoking Cessation and Healthcare Data Collection) within Southwark PCT surgeries.

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NOTES TO EDITOR

About Measles and Herd Immunisation

Measles is one of the most infectious diseases and it is caused by the measles virus and unfortunately the complications of measles affect one in every 15 children. Beginning like a bad cold, the child then develops a fever and a rash.

Herd Immunisation is when enough people in a community are immunised against certain diseases, then it is more difficult for that disease to get passed between those who aren’t immunised.

About Southwark PCT

Southwark Health and Social Care is dedicated to improving the health and wellbeing of the people who live in the London Borough of Southwark. We have over 2,000 staff. We deliver, manage, pay for and are responsible for a wide range of services that thousands of local people use on a daily basis.

Press Contact
Andrew Pike
Communications Team
020 7525 3105
[26] southwark.communication@southwarkpct.nhs.uk

MEDIA COVERAGE

To see where our news stories have been placed, please follow the [27] link.

Identifying smokers via text messaging proves effective for CVD battle

An innovative scheme using mobile technology to identify patients ‘at risk’ of developing CVD by effectively establishing smoking status has recently proved a great success in Hammersmith & Fulham PCT. The scheme found that the use of iPLATO Patient Care Messaging to request a patient’s smoking status via text message, resulted in significantly higher response rates than other methods of communication previously used, enabling a patient’s medical record to be updated quickly and efficiently.

According to a study made by the British Heart Foundation, the risk of mortality from any cardiovascular disease is 60% higher in smokers compared to non-smokers, making the identification of this ‘at risk’ group a crucial element in the battle against CVD.

From searches made on their GP system, the surgeries sent out a text message asking patients to text back their current smoking status. Patients who received this message were able to text back their status via a reply text that arrived at the surgery as an email (to a pre-defined surgery email address). The Brook Green Medical Centre, in Hammersmith & Fulham PCT, successfully used the platform and achieved response rates of 49% when requesting smoking status via text message.

Peter Dawson, Practice Manager at Brook Green Medical Centre said, “I found the campaign tool very easy to use. Response rates were much higher than expected and we have since received very positive feedback from patients who thought it a novel and efficient use of technology.”

The potential of this approach is considerable when new Department of Health data collection requirements are taken into account. The Local Delivery Plan Return (LDPR) is a data collection undertaken by the Department of Health to monitor the progress of SHA’s, PCT’s, and NHS trusts in the achievement against the Local delivery plan ‘trajectory schedules’ and data collected for monitoring purposes in relation to government policy.

As part of the Local Delivery Plan Return (LDPR), each PCT is required to submit the total number of patients on the register aged 16 and over with smoking status recorded in the last 15 months. The use of the iPLATO Patient Care Messaging to perform this task in GP surgeries in Hammersmith & Fulham PCT and elsewhere has proven to be very successful to support the achievement of this LPDR target.

Miles Freeman, Associate Director of Commissioning (Primary Care) at Hammersmith & Fulham PCT, said, ‘’Having the Patient Care Messaging capability within over 80% of our GP surgeries has enabled effective support of a range of PCT initiatives, including the accurate recording of Smoking Status on a Trust-wide basis and the subsequent improvement in referral to Smoking Cessation support and advice. Cost savings possible with this approach have also proven to be compelling, when compared to the cost of previous methods employed for similar ends.”

Funded centrally by the PCT, the service has been adopted by 85% of Hammersmith & Fulham PCT’s GP surgeries and is being used to address important Public Health concerns on an ongoing basis.

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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 Jan Adamson Primary Care Commissioning Manager on: 0203 313 7218 or at [28] jan.adamson@hf-pct.nhs.uk

Hammersmith and Fulham PCT to update medical records via automated voice messaging

[29] Patients of the Bush Doctors and Richford Gate Medical Practice in Hammersmith and Fulham Primary Care Trust will soon receive automated voice messages requesting information to update their medical record. The trial in two local GP practices, enabled by iPLATO, aims to improve the accuracy of core patient data held by GPs. The hope is that patients will like the new system and that it will save doctors time and money. If the trial is a success the PCT plans to roll out the system to 25 other practices using the iPLATO system.

The free service will send an automated voice message to a patient’s landline telephone asking them to confirm if they smoke or not. The automated messaging service clearly states that the call comes from the patient’s own GP surgery and will also specify who the call is for in case the phone is shared between people within the household. Patients are asked during the call to respond to the question via keystroke on their telephone keypad.

Dr. Susan McGoldrick GP at the Bush Doctors said, “We think our population is ready for this automated voice service, as it is a natural extension of the texting service we already offer to people who have their mobile telephone number recorded on the system here at the surgery. In this project we seek to streamline tedious but necessary tasks, such as continuously updating patient records, to free up staff to work with our patients. We know that this method will be more efficient than most other data collection methods, so what we are really looking at is establishing patient acceptance and satisfaction.

Tom Stevenson, spokesperson for the PCT, said, “We are excited about the opportunity to improve communication with our patients through innovative technology. Doctors need to collect information on all their patients’ smoking status every 15 months; but there are plenty of people who won’t see their GP that often. This new system makes it quick and convenient for both doctors and patients, and will hopefully increase the number of people we can offer stop smoking support to.”

This trial is an extension to a series of text messaging services with a similar aim conducted by Hammersmith and Fulham GP surgeries, Hammersmith and Fulham PCT and iPLATO over the last year.

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Notes for Editors:

About Hammersmith and Fulham PCT

Hammersmith and Fulham PCT is the NHS organisation responsible for planning and commissioning all NHS services on behalf of the 171,500 residents of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. There are 30 GP practices across the borough.

Press contact:
Tom Stevenson
020 8846 6572 / 07852 435637

GP-led Hypertension health promotion campaign delivers response rates of 76%

City and Hackney Primary Care Trust Recent results from a text messaging campaign for calling hypertensive patients in for periodic blood pressure reading ran by the Lea Surgery in City & Hackney tPCT has delivered response rates of 76%.

From searches made on their GP system, the surgery sent out a group text message to selected patients inviting them to call the surgery to make an appointment. Within three weeks of sending the text invitation, 149 out of 197 patients had had their blood pressure checked. These results have highlighted just how effective iPLATO Patient Care Messaging can be for health promotion campaigns.

Having high blood pressure is one of several ‘risk factors’ that can increase your chance of developing heart disease, stroke and other serious conditions. Treatment includes a change in lifestyle risk factors where these can be improved - losing weight if you are overweight, regular physical activity, a healthy diet, cutting back if you drink a lot of alcohol, stopping smoking, and a low salt intake. If needed, medication can lower blood pressure. Periodic monitoring of patients blood pressure is essential for supporting them reducing the risk for serious complications and conditions.

Dr Goel, GP at the Lea Surgery said: “Getting hold of the right patients for periodic reviews at the right time is often cumbersome. The system makes it a lot easier.”

Jonathan Mason, Head of Prescribing and Pharmacy at City & Hackney tPCT, said, ‘’The recent use of the iPLATO system by the Lea Surgery to support their hypertension campaign is another good example of the healthcare initiatives that are currently being positively supported by iPLATO Patient Care Messaging within City & Hackney tPCT. As the majority of City & Hackney GP surgeries now have the iPLATO capability, we look forward to more success stories to come.”

Funded centrally by the tPCT, the service has been adopted by 41 of City & Hackney tPCT’s GP surgeries and is being used to address important Public Health concerns such as Smoking, Flu, Childhood Immunisations, Breast Screening and Obesity.

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Notes for Editors:

About City and Hackney

City and Hackney Teaching 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. City and Hackney Primary Care Trust was set up on the 1st April 2001 and employs around 560 staff.

Oldham GP’s get to grips with new text messaging service

Tens of thousands of people in Oldham will now be receiving text messages from their GP.

These will include everything from reminders about GP, jab and breast screening appointments to health messages about quitting smoking.

This new and innovative scheme is rolling out across the borough - with several practices already signed up and ‘running with it’.

Karen Smith, practice manager at St Chad’s Medical Centre, Limeside, said: “People are so busy today it is easy to forget an appointment. An estimated 82% of the UK adult population own a mobile phone - so this is an ideal way to do our bit to help people manage their busy lives.

“We’ve had such positive feedback from patients and people are actually asking to be signed up.

“We are proud to be one of the first practices in Oldham to sign up for this and welcome any queries or comments from our patients.”

Shauna Dixon, director of clinical leadership at Oldham Primary Care Trust, said: “We are pleased and excited to be offering this service to our patients. A fantastic benefit of this system is being able to send out messages in a number of languages.

“Not only will this scheme benefit patients - it will also help to save more than £750 million of taxpayers money - which is wasted on missed appointments every year.

“We would like to reassure people that we have strict guidelines in place to ensure the safety of patient’s details. Patients are able to opt out if they wish by simply telling their GP or any practice staff.”

Text messaging is one of several initiatives that are being rolled out to improve patient’s access to primary care services. This includes extended opening hours and the ability to book appointments and order repeat prescriptions over the internet - which is already being offered by many practices.

The recent results from the Patient Experience Survey show that overall most people are happy with access to primary care services in Oldham. However, practices and the PCT are always looking for ways to continually improve. These new initiatives are in the early stages of life and it is hoped that as more practices adopt the ideas and patients begin to reap the benefits, the satisfaction rate will increase even more.

If you would like to find out more about these services contact your GP practice.

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Pharmacies in London to run mobile smoking cessation campaigns via SMS

Pharmacies in London will launch a text messaging service to validate smoking status and invite ‘quitters’ for smoking cessation services in addition to using the system for ‘follow-up’ over the next year. The adoption of the Patient Care Messaging service, provided by iPLATO, has been driven by the successful use of the system for similar campaigns in GP surgeries across 34 PCTs.

The pharmacies using iPLATO’s Patient Care Messaging for Pharmacies service, will receive support via best practice techniques for launching the text messaging service, enabling them to fulfil their growing role in Public Health.

A representative from one of the pharmacies said, “We are excited about the opportunity to improve engagement with our patients through innovative technology. For any broad patient communication solution we are always concerned with privacy and data protection. The PCT has developed guidelines to ensure patient safety that we adhere to. According to these guidelines, patients can opt out of the service at any time by simply telling their pharmacist or any staff. We would encourage all customers to hand in their mobile number so that we can reach them with this new service.”

“We are delighted to support pharmacies delivering public health services” said Tobias Alpsten, Managing Director for iPLATO. “Through our technology and knowledge we can let pharmacies benefit from our experience of overseeing dozens of mobile smoking cessation campaigns. This will enable them to better serve their communities and improve their businesses. In the first stage we aim to enable targeted smoking cessation campaigns. In the future, we expect to grow the platform to automated services such as repeat prescription and medication reminders. We hope to create revenue share based partnerships with pharmacy management systems to achieve this goal.”

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NON-EXECUTIVE

Phil Sissons - Non-Executive Director

Phil Sissons joined iPLATO as a non-executive director in January 2006 bringing over 30 years of experience in the international IT Services industry to the company.

Phil’s experience includes five years leading Oracle Corporation’s Healthcare Division. In 1994 Phil moved to SMS United Kingdom to sharpen his focus on Healthcare information systems and in 2002 Richard Granger chose Phil to represent the National Programme for NHS IT to Industry.

Phil supports the Intellect UK trade association, particularly in the Healthcare Interest Group. For the years of 1995/96 and 1999/2001, he held the role of Chairman of the Healthcare group and is currently on the Intellect UK Board and the Health Council.

Over the course of an intense career, Phil has represented the Health Computing industry on many issues (including standards, procurement, and PFI) with the Health Service.

[partners images]

Remember ur GP appt, GP text messaging service

Newham residents are to benefit from receiving GP appointment reminders and health information on their mobiles phones via text message. Newham Primary Care Trust (PCT) has funded 47 GP surgeries to launch and operate iPLATO Patient Care Messaging. This new service has already been rolled out in some GP practices in Newham.

The text messaging service aims to reduce non-attendance to booked GP appointments by giving people timely reminders. This service will also be used for informing patients about critical NHS services such as cancer screening and immunisation.

According to Imperial College researchers, non-attendance to appointments cost the NHS - and the tax payer - more than £750 million per year. The iPLATO system has proven to reduce non-attendance at booked appointments in General Practice by 26% to 40%. In addition to reaping financial benefits through increased efficiency, the PCT hopes to establish an effective communication channel for health information.

With an estimated 82% of the UK adult population owning a mobile phone, participating surgeries will be able to reach a significant number of their patients through this scheme. Text messages are free to receive for the patient. If patients choose to respond, they will be charged standard operator rates depending on their individual contract. To achieve optimal uptake of and benefits from this service surgeries encourage their patients to give their mobile phone numbers and make sure that their details are updated.

Dr Rafiq of Boleyn Road Medical Practice said: “Mobile phones are used by most of our patients and so text messaging is an effective way to communicate with them. This service has the potential to significantly increase the number of patients attending clinics as well as saving on surgery administration costs. We are encouraging our patients to give their mobile number at reception to take advantage of this new service.”

Dr Frances Haste, Acting Director of Public Health at Newham PCT and London Borough of Newham said: “We are excited about the opportunity to improve communication with our patients through innovative technology. The text messaging service will help to remind patients about their GP appointments and help promote health improvement initiatives. Newham PCT has developed guidelines to ensure that patient data is protected. Patients can opt out of the service at any time by simply telling their GP or any practice staff.”

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Notes for Editors:

About Newham PCT

Newham Primary Care Trust (PCT) directly provides a range of primary and community health services, purchases healthcare on behalf of the local population and is responsible for developing GP, pharmacy, dentistry and optometry services. We directly employ around 1,300 staff based across 23 sites.

Contact for Newham Primary Care Trust:
Ian Thorpe, 020 8586 6329

About iPLATO

iPLATO is a privately owned limited company founded in London in the autumn of 1999. In 2003, iPLATO was awarded a SMART Feasibility Grant by the Department of Trade & Industry to study the feasibility for national implementation of a system to remind outpatients about scheduled appointments using text messaging technology.

Since completing the study, the company has invested substantial resources towards overcoming the barriers to entry of the healthcare market and now provides successful healthcare solutions to NHS organisations throughout the United Kingdom - building a promising business around its flagship service ‘Patient Care Messaging’.

The European Venture Contest, organised by the European Commission, recognised iPLATO as one of the top ten early stage technology ventures ready to “reshape their industry and to conquer the global market” and featured on the Red Herring Europe Top 200 of companies to watch in 2006. iPLATO began 2008 with extensive (PCT funded) roll out of Patient Care Messaging to GP surgeries across 10 Primary Care Trusts.

Press contact:

Julia Hanley
020 3178 4676
[30] julia.hanley@iplato.net
One Lyric Sqaure, W6 0NB, London, United Kingdom
[31] www.iplato.net
Pictures available on request

PATIENT CARE MESSAGING FOR GP SURGERIES - SYSTEM FEATURES

Two-way Messaging

Reply texts from patients are automatically directed as emails to a predefined email address.

Targeted Campaign Messaging

Patient Care Messaging enables the creation and sending of manual text messages to individuals and/or groups of patients for targeted health promotion campaigns (excellent for QOF).

Automated Appointment Reminders

Automated appoint reminders can be sent to patients by text message at a pre-defined time before the surgery visit, significantly reducing the number of missed appointments.

National Read Code Functionality

The unique National Read Code functionality enables the Patient Medical Record to be automatically updated with the relevant Read Code, indicating a text message has been sent. In addition, a relevant ‘campaign specific’ Read Code can be attached to the outgoing message and the Patient Medical Record updated accordingly.

N3 Connection (NHSnet Hosting)

Patient Care Messaging is a secure solution and the only text messaging service to integrate to all major GP administration systems and also to be hosted within NHSnet.

Multiple PAS Integration

Patient Care Messaging fully integrates to all major GP Administration systems (including EMIS PCS & LV, INPS Vision, iSOFT).

Reporting Module Functionality

User / administrator access to real time gateway status with visual status indicators.
Advanced reporting wizard for generating customisable reports on: messages sent, messages received, pending, undelivered, invalid or failed numbers.
Full messaging history with reports.
All reports can be printed or exported into downloadable formats.

Voice Messaging

Automated voice messages can be sent to a patient’s mobile phone, stating who the call comes from and also who the call is for, in case the phone is shared between people within a household. Patients can be asked to respond to questions during the call, via keystroke on their telephone keypad. Voice messaging should be viewed as a natural extension of the iPLATO texting service, providing an additional channel of communication.

PATIENT CARE MESSAGING FOR PHARMACIES - SYSTEM FEATURES

Two-way messaging

Reply texts from patients are automatically directed as emails to a predefined email address.

N3 Connection (NHSnet Hosting)

Patient Care Messaging is a secure solution and the only text messaging service to integrate to all major GP administration systems and also to be hosted within NHSnet.

Reporting module functionality

User / administrator access to real time gateway status with visual status indicators.
Advanced reporting wizard for generating customisable reports on: messages sent, messages received, pending, undelivered, invalid or failed numbers.
Full messaging history with reports.
All reports can be printed or exported into downloadable formats.

Voice messaging

iPLATO IN THE MEDIA

Recent ’iPLATO’ media coverage:

M-SITE

Reliable, Robust Technology The M-Site is hosted on a secure web server provided by iPLATO. The iPLATO M-Site does not require any additional hard or software for the participating surgery, pharmacy or dentist. The m-site will not contain any confidential patient information. Set-up and management of the M-Site requires PC access to the internet for the participating surgery, pharmacy or dentist.

Easy to set-up - Template Driven Content

M-Site contains healthcare provider information:

Healthcare Providers Contact Details
Telephone Numbers, website addresses and relevant contact email addresses
Maps relevant to the location which can be scrolled and zoomed into
Details about out of hours services
Ability to cancel appointment and order repeat prescriptions directly on the phone (feature under development )

Patients can access the M-Site by…

Typing in the address into their mobile phone browser, e.g. wap.iplato.net/val
Opening the m-site via a link contained in the body of an SMS reminder e.g.

“From the Vale Medical Centre: Reminder of your appt on 06 Nov at 10:50am with Dr Jones. Reply ONLY to cancel. For info wap.iplato.net/val”

The M-Site can be accessed via a WAP push, triggered through an assigned gateway number.

These numbers can be printed on collateral e.g. “Text the word ‘val’ to 078 0000 1265 and we will send you instructions for accessing further surgery details.”

For further information regarding iPLATO M- Site, contact iPLATO on the details below:

1 Hammersmith Grove

London

W6 0NB

Tel. 020 3178 4680

[42] [Contact Us]

PATIENT CARE MESSAGING

iPLATO Patient Care Messaging is a web based text messaging system hosted within NHSnet, that integrates to all major GP administration systems, allowing fully automated appointment reminders and targeted group messaging for health promotion.Begun as a means of reducing DNA rates within the NHS, Patient Care Messaging has since evolved into a highly effective form of wider patient communication, supporting a range of GP/PCT initiatives including Smoking Cessation, Childhood Immunisation, Screening, Obesity and Flu-Jab.

Patient Care Messaging offers GP surgeries and PCTs the ability to contact patients in a highly cost effective and immediate way, by sending patients SMS (text) messages to their mobile phone.Patient Care Messaging allows GP surgeries to contact large groups of patients when running targeted health campaigns or sending appointment reminders. Patients can respond by text if they wish, with replies being automatically forwarded to a pre-assigned email address.Compared to traditional forms of communication, text messaging is extremely personalised and allows GP surgeries to contact hundreds of patients within minutes.

Highlights

Patient Care Messaging enables the creation and sending of manual text messages to individuals and/or groups of patients for targeted health promotion campaigns (excellent for QOF).
Patient Care Messaging fully integrates to all major GP Administration systems (including EMIS PCS & LV, INPS Vision, iSOFT)*
Automated appoint reminders can be sent to patients by text message at a pre-defined time before the surgery visit, significantly reducing the number of missed appointments.
Reply texts from patients are automatically directed as emails to a predefined email address.
The unique National Read Code functionality enables the Patient Medical Record to be automatically updated with the relevant Read Code, indicating a text message has been sent. In addition, a relevant ‘campaign specific’ Read Code can be attached to the outgoing message and the Patient Medical Record updated accordingly. *
Patient Care Messaging is a secure solution and the only text messaging service to integrate to all major GP administration systems and also to be hosted within NHSnet.

*Not applicable for Patient Care Messaging for Pharmacies

The Benefits

Significantly reduced GP missed appointments via automated appointment reminder functionality.
Sustained reduction in missed GP appointments as the volume of mobile numbers increases.
A major increase in effectiveness & efficiency for health promotion campaigns.
Response rates from targeted health campaigns are up to six times more effective than traditional methods.

Direct cost savings and reduced workload:
Time saving for administrative staff (no need to stuff ++ envelopes for clinics).
Major reductions in postage and stationary costs.
High patient satisfaction.
Patients responding very positively to text led health promotion campaigns.

Who You Can Expect to Reach

80% - 90% of the adult population use mobile phones.
Surgeries may start off with 20% - 30% of patient numbers, however, this penetration grows rapidly once surgeries start to use Patient Care Messaging and offer this service.
Patient Care Messaging has been successfully used to engage with hard to reach patients, including the young and socially excluded.
A multi-lingual functionality allows patients from minority groups to be contacted in languages other than English.

Messaging Applications

DNA Reduction
Smoking Cessation
Childhood Immunisation
Flu Jab
Pandemic
Periodic Review reminders
Screening (Breast Screening etc.)
Healthcare data updates (height & weight for BMI calculation )
Individual ‘customised’ messaging (e.g. appointment cancellations due to Doctors absence etc.)

Interested? For evidence based reports/case studies on the wide range of health initiatives currently being supported by iPLATO Patient Care Messaging please email or call us on the details below:

One Lyric Square

London

W6 0NB

Tel. 020 3178 4680

[43] [Contact Us]

[44]

View Demonstration

iPLATO PATIENT CARE MESSAGING DEMONSTRATION

[45] Click here to replay demonstration

GP led Smoking Cessation campaigns deliver response rates of 46%

[46] Recent GP led text messaging campaigns have highlighted the effectiveness of iPLATO Patient Care Messaging for the identification of smokers in Barking & Dagenham PCT. Results from the first 10 surgeries to run the campaign have revealed average patient response rates of 46% - a major improvement when compared with alternative methods of collecting the same information.The Smoking Status ‘update’ campaigns were run with the aim of reducing Smoking prevalence in a patient population, by effectively establishing smoking status to subsequently refer ‘quitters’ to Smoking Cessation support and advice From searches made on their GP system, the surgeries sent out a text message asking patients to text back their current smoking status. Patients who received this message were able to text back their status via a reply text that arrived at the surgery as an email (to a pre-defined surgery email address).

Jim McManus, Associate Director of Health Improvement at Barking & Dagenham PCT, said, “The iPLATO platform is proving to be an invaluable tool for the support of health promotion initiatives. Without the effective identification and engagement of at risk groups in the community, it can be difficult to direct relevant services successfully. These recent results have shown how effective Patient Care Messaging has been at supporting GP led Health Promotion campaigns. Compared to other potential approaches these campaigns have also proven to be cost effective.”

Funded centrally by the PCT, the service has been adopted by over 80% of Barking & Dagenham GPs and is being used to address important Public Health concerns such as Smoking, Flu, 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.

- Ends -

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 640 staff. For more information, visit [47] www.bdpct.nhs.uk.

Press contact for Barking & Dagenham Primary Care Trust:
Rowan Taylor, Head of Communications, 020 8532 6220, [48] rowan.taylor@bdpct.nhs.uk

CONTACT ME

It is iPLATO’s policy to not sell, trade, exchange or otherwise make available any personal information to any other company or organisation.

DEPARTMENTS

Sales & Marketing
Telephone: +44 (0) 20 3178-4676
Mob: +44 (0) 79 8351-3395
E-mail: [49] tom.fletcher@iplato.net
Fax: +44 (0) 20 3008-6161

Outcome and Delivery Service
Telephone: +44 (0) 20 3178-4675
E-mail: [50] alex.dasgupta@iplato.net
Fax: +44 (0) 20 3008-6161

Business Development

Telephone: +44 (0) 20 3178-4675
E-mail: [50] sheena.macpherson@iplato.net
Fax: +44 (0) 20 3008-6161

CONTACT DETAILS

LONDON OFFICE

iPLATO Healthcare Ltd
One Lyric Square
London W6 0NB
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0) 20 3178-4675
Fax: +44 (0) 20 3008-6161
E-mail: [4] info@iplato.net

Please click on PDF for a list of relevant Transport Links or follow the link for a ‘google’ map.

[51] [View Map]

[52] [Travel Links]

CZECH REPUBLIC OFFICE

iPLATO Healthcare Ltd
Pardubice, Sladkovského 767
Pardubice, 530 02
Czech Republic
Tel: +420 46661-6440
E-mail: [53] jirka.orlik@iplato.net

Please follow the link for a ‘google’ map.

[54] [View Map]

PUBLISHED CASE STUDIES

iPLATO takes the evaluation of outcomes achieved by the use of mobile technology in preventative care very seriously. Most research we conduct seeks to evaluate and identify best practice in three areas: 1) Health Education 2) Identification of people ‘at risk’ and 2) Engagement with people at risk to support lifestyle change, medication, screening or immunisation. [55] [Request Info]

LINKS

Please see below a selection of useful links:

PARTNERS

Partnering is at the heart of iPLATO’s business strategy.

Within our commercial partnering programme we work with mobile network operators, consultants, systems integrators, telecommunication infrastructure manufacturers and software providers to reach healthcare organisations and patients all over the world.

Effective mHealth solutions operate in a healthcare ICT ‘eco system’ which includes electronic patient records, patient administration systems, medical devices, mobile and fix line telecommunication networks, security and cool applications. Within our solutions partnering programme we work under the guiding principle that all components of the overall mHealth solution must be fairly rewarded for their contribution.

Please find a selection of partners we work with to deliver mHealth in the United Kingdom.

COMMERCIAL PARTNERS

iPLATO has partnerships agreements with the following companies:

[60] Orange

[61] INPS

ORANGE

The Orange group is one of the world’s largest mobile communications companies, with over 40 million customers in 21 countries across Europe and beyond. As at the end of June 2002, Orange was the largest mobile operator in both the UK with over 12.8 million active customers, and France with over 18.6 million customers. iPLATO has been working with Orange since the end of 2000 in a fruitful partnership, conceiving and developing valuable services for Orange’s business customers. iPLATO is also a member of the Orange Developers Forum; Orange’s development platform at the forefront of the development and testing of new mobile voice and data applications, utilising mobile technologies and enablers.

INPS

INPS is a leading UK supplier of high quality clinical management systems with an enviable reputation for excellent customer service. The company is part of the CEGEDIM Group, which supplies healthcare technology and information solutions to over 30,000 GPs, pharmacies and pharmaceutical manufacturers across Europe.

INPS develops, supplies and supports Vision - the most complete primary care solution available. Vision can be deployed within the practice or from a central server location, and has Connecting for Health compliance certification for Choose & Book, EPS and GP2GP. Vision is a key component of many LSP strategies.

SOLUTION PARTNERS

iPLATO has partnerships agreements with the following companies:

[62] EMIS

[63] ISOFT

[64] Carelink [ioko][64]

EMIS

EMIS is the UK’s leading IT supplier in Primary Healthcare, hosting over 33 million electronic patient records (EPRs) within its systems. Around 55 per cent of doctors in the UK currently use EMIS software each day.

As an innovative IT provider, our corporate policies ensure realistic and objective appraisal of primary healthcare computing both for present and future needs. Comprehensive IT solutions and services are delivered to the NHS Primary Healthcare market.

iSOFT

iSOFT produces healthcare software solutions, and the company is a world leader in its field. The company’s products are used by more than 8,000 organisations in 27 countries for managing patient information and driving improvements in healthcare services.

IOKO

Carelink works with over 200 NHS and other health industry organisations, including private sector care providers. Carelink is especially known for providing N3 hosting services - connecting technology and solution providers with the NHS and giving trusts reach onto the public internet.

Carelink is also the leading provider of infrastructure, networks and service management to private sector providers in the UK.

In addition to connecting applications to the N3 network and the NHS Spine Carelink’s capabilities include developing and hosting sophisticated Internet, intranet and extranet sites; building and managing applications; supporting and developing infrastructure.

iPLATO PATIENT CARE MESSAGING

More than 700 GP surgeries, pharmacies and clinics use iPLATO Patient Care Messaging to offer quality mHealth services to their patients. Tightly integrated to EMIS, Vision and iSoft this market leading product has proven to deliver significant improvements to patient service and operational performance in areas such as data collection, call / recall, access and appointment management.

Key Benefits

Streamline data collection through smart two-way messaging
A free inbound mobile phone number for each site allows you to capture more mobile numbers, keep patient contact details up to date and improve access for groups of patients such as the deaf.
Our experienced team provides you with support and best practice during office hours over the phone or via e-mail. Free of charge we also provide you with patient information posters and help with consent policies and issue resolution.
Our system is securely hosted within N3. iPLATO is IGSoC approved and all members of the team are trained to help you deal with sensitive data.
Tight integration to the most popular GP systems allows you to benefit from advanced read code functionality, sophisticated reporting and fully automated appointment reminders.
Free surgery m-Site allows you to offer exciting interactive mHealth services to patients with Smartphones.

Some User Experiences

E-mail us now on [4] info@iplato.net and we will help you formulate your own business case for launching mHealth services.

ABOUT US

iPLATO Healthcare is a London based company dedicated to mHealth since 2006.

iPLATO’s mobile health solutions have proven to transform patient services and reduce health inequalities across populations. Responding to international demand for mHealth the company is currently expanding into the United States, India and Europe.

Serving millions of patients and thousands of healthcare professionals every day iPLATO has emerged as the leader in mobile health. Across this network, healthcare organisations use iPLATO solutions to promote smoking cessation, weight loss, childhood immunisation, vascular checks and cancer screening as well as offer mobile services for people with diabetes, hypertension, epilepsy and HIV.

iPLATO Healthcare has a strong track record in working with healthcare professionals, payers, providers, pharmacies and pharmaceutical companies to improve health outcomes and operational performance.

EXECUTIVE MANAGEMENT

Tobias Alpsten - Managing Director (Co-Founder)

As iPLATO’s Managing Director, Tobias Alpsten is responsible for setting overall strategy and for overseeing business development, sales, innovation and service delivery.

Tobias works in partnership with leading academic institutions such as the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery and the Imperial College on research in the area of mobile health. Tobias is a frequent speaker at events and conferences. He is also supporting the British government in setting national strategies for technology based innovation in healthcare through the Horizon Scanning initiative.

Tobias started his career at Accenture’s Paris office in 1996. Later based in London, he joined the ‘Internet revolution’ in 1997 specialising in e-procurement strategy and Business Process Outsourcing. Tobias left Accenture to set up a independent mobile technology consultancy in London in 2000.

Tobias holds a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology from KTH (the Royal Institute of Technology) in Stockholm and ENST (Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications) in Paris. He is trilingual in English, French and Swedish.

Martin Rowden - Director Finance & Operations (Co-Founder)

Martin is the CFO of iPLATO and co-founder of the business. In additional to the traditional CFO responsibilities Martin manages all operational aspects of the organisation including the development and support of the company’s mHealth technology solutions.

Martin’s background offers a range of entrepreneurial expertise matched with institutional and global experience spanning over 20 years.

With a BEc and as a qualified Chartered Accountant (ACA), Martin spent 10 years with PriceWaterhouseCoopers in both Canada and Australia in the Financial Advisory Services division before moving to the UK in 1997 and following his passion as an entrepreneur.

Since 19997 Martin has been involved (in varying executive and non-executive roles) in no less than 6 successful technology ‘start-ups’. In 2005 he co-founded iPLATO Healthcare with Tobias to focus on the nascent but emerging area of mHealth.

CAREER OPPORTUNITIES

iPLATO is growing. We are always interested in hearing from ambitious and talented team-workers with a passion for healthcare. If you would like us to consider your qualifications, please send a full CV and cover letter to [72] jobs@iplato.net

We are currently looking for

[73] Account Manager - London
[74] Non Executive Director - Telecoms - London
[75] Non Executive Director - Healthcare - London

Account Manager - London

Job Title: Account Manager

Reports to: Head of Sales & Marketing

Location: Office based - Hammersmith London W6

Job Status: Full-time

Salary: £24k- 30k dependant on experience.

Background: iPLATO Healthcare LTD is a leading company developing and providing innovative technology solutions to the healthcare sector. Responsible for driving company expansion, the iPLATO Sales & Marketing Team is at the heart of the company. As a result of recent company expansion, we are now looking to add a bright and ambitious Account Manager to this team. Reporting to the Head of Sales & Marketing, yours will be a key position within the business, responsible for maintenance and development of strong client relationships to insure customer retention and sales maximisation of each account.

Responsibilities include:

Maintaining and developing strong client relationships within existing accounts.
Insuring customer retention
Developing a thorough knowledge of our products.
Maximising sales within each account by promoting iPLATO services & products where applicable.
Maintaining effective regular communication with all key customer accounts through consistent monthly reporting and ongoing client liaison.
Ongoing in depth analysis of each existing account to identify strengths and weaknesses in support of customer retention and sales.
Dealing with all client queries and complaints in a professional and commercial manner.
Working with other staff to influence company development priorities in the light of client feedback.
Coordination, organisation and attendance of meetings/events/workshops as applicable.

Person Specification:

4 years in an Account Management role.
Will have a proven track record in customer retention.
Healthcare experience preferred, able to understand company products/solutions and their benefit to the client.
Good analytical skills.
Exceptional relationship-building skills with an ability to work well with different personalities.
Good telephone manners.
The ability to listen & understand a customer’s needs and able to suggest solutions and/or alternative strategies to meet those needs.
Target oriented.
The ability to organise yourself well, to set goals, to plan and execute the plan successfully.
You will be punctual, reliable and honest in all your dealings with staff and customers.
A focused individual and team player, willing to take the initiative.
Microsoft Office Skills a MUST with emphasis on Excel
A first rate communicator, fluent in English with good written English & an ability to compose clear/effective letters/emails.
Prepared to travel throughout the UK and sometimes abroad.
You must be eligible to be resident and entitled to work in the UK.

iPLATO’s solutions are cutting edge in its industry. This role will offer the right candidate an exceptional opportunity to influence the future of healthcare in general and personally contribute to the success of a world leading innovation company. Further details provided to selected candidates. Please submit your CV with covering letter to [72] jobs@iplato.net

Non Executive Director - Telecoms - London

Job Title: NED - Telecoms.

Reports to: Managing Director.

Location: Office based - Hammersmith London W6.

Job Status: 1-3 days in a month.

Salary: TBA.

Background: iPLATO Healthcare LTD is a leading company developing and providing innovative technology solutions to the healthcare sector.

Job Specification:

As a Non-Executive Director you will work alongside other Non-Executive and Executive Directors as an equal member of the Executive Board. You will share the responsibility with other directors for the decisions made by the Board and the success of the organisation in delivering a wide range of services to the members.

Person Specification:

The ideal candidate will be a respected thought leader in the UK and/or global telecommunications industry and be able to demonstrate the following:

Significant relationships with international telcos.

Prior executed global telecoms strategy.

Experience in designing, promoting and negotiating deals with mobile operators.

A high level of commitment to the needs of members across Health and Social Care.

Strategic Direction - The ability to think and plan ahead, balancing needs and constraints.

Effective influencing and communication - Be able to influence and persuade others.

Intellectual flexibility - The ability to think clearly and creatively.

Experience of strategic planning, financial risk and performance management.

Key Tasks:

From day one, you will play an active role in iPLATO’s international expansion plans, at first, targeted at near markets in Europe but, increasingly, at a global scale targeting the large healthcare markets in terms of population or spend. Specifically:

- Facilitate the Company’s relationships and commercial negotiations with dominant mobile telecommunication operators outside the United Kingdom.

- Facilitate the creation / negotiation of business models that meet the requirements of the mobile network operator partner and iPLATO as well as other local stakeholders.

Further details provided to selected candidates. Please submit your CV to [72] jobs@iplato.net.

Non Executive Director - Healthcare - London

Job Title: NED - Healthcare.

Reports to: Managing Director.

Location: Office based - Hammersmith London W6.

Job Status: 1-3 days in a month.

Salary: TBA.

Background: iPLATO Healthcare LTD is a leading company developing and providing innovative technology solutions to the healthcare sector.

Job Specification:

Person Specification:

The ideal candidate will be a respected thought leader in UK healthcare and be able to demonstrate:

Significant existing relationships with senior NHS or DoH management.
Significant existing relationships with senior UK Healthcare payer organisations.
Execution and/or negotiation of ‘turn-key’ countrywide deals with NHS organisations.
Execution and/or negotiation of grant funded research in the healthcare sector.
Strategic Direction - The ability to think and plan ahead, balancing needs and constraints.
Experience of strategic planning, financial risk and performance management.

Key Tasks:

From day one, you will positively impact iPLATO’s ability to reach its commercial goals in the United Kingdom and assist company management to effectively market the organisation to enhance its standing in the UK healthcare sector and the NHS.

- To establish and facilitate the Company’s relationship with leading funding bodies for mobile health services such as NHS organisations (PCTs, Acute Trusts and Central) as well secondary sources for funding such as grants from Government, the EU, and other.

- To develop and maintain proactive relationships with senior NHS and DoH executives to influence commercial decisions pertaining to the use of iPLATO services and mobile Health solutions.

- To support iPLATO’s goals of communicating the benefits of mobile health and join the iPLATO team in educating the UK market on the improvement of patient care through mobile health initiatives and services.

- To provide a professional management interface with policy development in the health and social care sector.

- To strengthen connections with the local community, patients and stakeholders and represent iPLATO externally.

Further details provided to selected candidates. Please submit your CV to [72] jobs@iplato.net.

SOLUTIONS

iPLATO’s evidence based mobile health solutions have proven to transform patient services and reduce health inequalities across populations. We work closely with national and regional health authorities as well as healthcare providers (large and small), pharmaceutical companies, pharmacies and health insurers using mHealth to, measurably, improve outcomes.

Harnessing the potential of new technology often includes process redesign, technology customisation, integration and change management. To deliver end-to-end patient service transformation, therefore, iPLATO’s solutions include a comprehensive set of professional and technology services.

Wellness

iPLATO has extensive experience in the area of primary prevention. Following a tried and tested methodology, iPLATO’s consultants work with GPs and pharmacists to collect and validate data, engage and enroll patients and, if necessary, support adherence and persistence to treatment.

Here are some examples:

Diagnosis

iPLATO’s solutions have proven to maximize the benefits of diagnostics services. iPLATO can help in three important ways. First, we can enable population-wide risk stratification. Second, we support patient self diagnosis or pre-screening. Finally, we can increase the use of existing screening facilities and equipment or, if required, bring additional diagnostics services to the community.

Here are some examples:

[82] Breast Screening
[83] Vascular Checks
[84] Chlamydia Screening
Cervical Screening

Long Term Condition Management

With demand on health services consistently raising there has been a growing enthusiasm for telehealthcare services. mHealth is an attractive sub-segment of telehealthcare. In fact, by leveraging existing networks and devices, iPLATO has proven that mHealth can transform telehealthcare. Operating at much lower cost, mHealth allows telecare services to reach to more people.

Examples:

[85] Epilepsy
[86] Hypertension
Asthma
HIV
Diabetes

CONTACT INFORMATION

One Lyric Square
London
W6 0NB
Tel: +44 (0) 20 3178-4675
Fax: +44 (0) 20 3008-6161
Email: [4] info@iplato.net
[87] [Full Contact Details]

ABOUT US

Serving millions of patients and thousands of healthcare professionals every day iPLATO has emerged as the leader in mobile health. Across this network, participating healthcare organisations use iPLATO solutions to promote smoking cessation, weight loss, childhood immunisation, vascular checks and cancer screening as well as offer mobile services for people with diabetes, hypertension, epilepsy and HIV. [88] [Read More]

NEW PARTNER INQUIRIES

iPLATO is looking for healthcare specific organisations to partner with.
[89] [Read More]

Text reminders from GP Practices

[29] GP Practices in Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale are piloting a new text messaging service to help reduce the number of missed appointments.

Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale Primary Care Trust (HMRPCT) is investing £25,000 to fund the initiative, known as iPLATO Patient Care Messaging. This service will enable practices to send a reminder text message to patients who have supplied their mobile phone number 24 hours in advance. If a patient is unable to attend the appointment, they can notify the practice by simply replying to the message.

GP practices will also be able to use the service to prompt patients to attend check up appointments.

Vivienne Ben-David, head of primary care at HMRPCT, said: “It’s really important that patients attend their GP appointments or cancel them if they cannot attend. The Patient Care Messaging service will help us to reduce the number of wasted appointments and pass cancellations on to patients who really need them. Of course we will be evaluating the effectiveness of the service during its pilot stage and will be welcoming feedback from patients.”

The following practices are taking part in the pilot:

Heywood
Longford Street, Heady Hill Surgery, York House Surgery

Middleton
Windermere Surgery, 133 Bowness Rd, Junction Surgery

Rochdale
Drake Street Surgery, Ashworth Street Surgery, Village Medical Centre, East Street Surgery, Healey Surgery, Baillie Street- Dr Babar & partners, Vicars Drive Surgery, Triple H Practice, Lowerplace- Dr Syed’s, Milnrow Village Practice, Tweedale Street Surgery, Dr Ghafoor- Baillie Street Surgery

Higher uptake of iPLATO’s Mobile Health Services across PCTs

Appoints Chief Medical Officer from Imperial College to accelerate development of evidence based mobile health services

Mobile health specialist, iPLATO, announced today that it has rolled out Patient Care Messaging extensively across 10 Primary Care Trusts in the first quarter of 2008. The roll-outs will allow an additional 2 million people across England to benefit from improved access and mobile health promotion from their GPs. Confirming the national appeal of the platform the majority of the PCTs to launch iPLATO Patient Care Messaging are located outside of London.

Underlining an evolution in market perception, only half of these launches primarily targeted DNA rate reduction - with the remaining PCTs adopting the platform for the support of Public Health areas such as Smoking Cessation, Obesity, Screening and Immunisation.

“Our Primary Care Trust has funded iPLATO Patient Care Messaging as a strategic capability for 42 surgeries, to enable broad engagement with our population”, says Lesley Mountford, Director of Public Health at City and Hackney PCT. “We are looking at text appointment reminders as a means to establish a ‘mobile relationship’ with patients, but we emphasise the opportunity to run mobile health promotion campaigns. This year we plan to use the texting in breast screening and smoking cessation. We are really pleased that the vast majority of the surgeries chose to take part. As a result more than 90% of our population will now benefit from mobile services.”

A crucial aspect to fuel this growth has been iPLATO’s evidence based offerings, which have allowed its NHS partners to not only identify and engage with at risk patients through mobile health promotion, but also to confirm the impact of these campaigns as well. The company has appointed Dr Josip Car as Chief Medical Officer to accelerate the development of the company’s service offering, clearly emphasising its commitment to deliver evidence and outcomes.

“I am delighted to join a young and dynamic team”, says Dr Josip Car, General Practitioner and Director of e-Health at Imperial College. “With a rapidly growing patient base and platform integrated to the current healthcare delivery system, I feel that there is a magnificent opportunity to expand the offering and really improve the health of patients and populations. The three main areas of offerings we are looking at are access improvement / practice efficiency, health promotion and support to patients with long term conditions. The mobile channel has a huge role to play in all three areas.”

- Ends -

Notes for Editors:

Press contact for City and Hackney Teaching Primary Care Trust:

Pamela Froggatt
External Communications and Campaigns Manager
City and Hackney Teaching Primary Care Trust
020 7683 4265

Text Messaging Boosts Obesity Battle

[29] A highly innovative scheme to use mobile technology to obtain a patients weight has proved a great success in Hammersmith & Fulham PCT.

The recent scheme found that by using iPLATO Patient Care Messaging to request a patient’s weight via text message, the patient’s medical record could be updated quickly and efficiently with a current body mass index (BMI) reading. This finding ties straight into the government’s £372m ‘Healthy Living’ strategy, which aims at cutting levels of obesity in England.

After sharp increases in the last decade, nearly a quarter of adults and nearly a fifth of children are now currently obese in the UK. By using their GP Administration System (EMIS, INPS Vision, etc.), linked to Patient Care Messaging, GP surgeries can support ‘obesity related’ mobile health promotion campaigns via the sending of personalised text messages. In this case: ‘What is your weight?’

This approach has proved considerably more effective than traditional ways of obtaining this information. The Bush Doctors Surgery, in Hammersmith & Fulham PCT, successfully tested the platform and achieved response rates of 29%.

Mandy Norton, Practice Manager at The Bush Doctors said, ”Text messaging has been a massive help, enabling us to gather a patient’s weight quickly in order to calculate their BMI. Of course we weigh people at the surgery, but this method allows us to quickly and very cost effectively update the records of people who may not need our services very often. With mobile being the communication method of choice for our very varied patient base and with obesity levels being where they are, we feel that this is a perfect complement to our current service ”.

Hammersmith & Fulham PCT’s Local Enhanced Service for Cardio-Vascular Disease requires a recent BMI reading for 40% of the population. The campaign took less than one hour of a Practice Manager’s time, including searching for patients with old or no BMI reading, sending the text message, receiving replies and entering the results back onto the patient record. The campaign will now be replicated across the Borough, touching the lives of almost 100,000 people.

iPLATO’s Managing Director, Tobias Alpsten said, “Over the years we have seen surgeries use our text messaging system to develop health promotion campaigns. Being able to obtain a patient’s current BMI reading in a fast and accurate way could play a significant role in the fight to reduce obesity levels nationwide.’

- Ends -

Notes for Editors:

About Hammersmith and Fulham PCT

All media enquiries should be directed to the Press and Communications department on
Tel: 020 8846 6572 fax: 020 8846 7961 [90] tom.stevenson@hf-pct.nhs.uk

EMIS and iPLATO mobile health services reach 1 million patients in the UK

EMIS accredited partner iPLATO Healthcare revealed that coverage of their Patient Care Messaging services has risen to over one million GP patients. Facilitating this growth has been the ground breaking platform, securely linked to EMIS, coupled with a 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.

Sean Riddell, Healthcare Managing Director of EMIS said: “We are delighted to celebrate the one million patient milestone for this innovative text messaging service, which is delivering very real benefits to both EMIS practices and patients.”

“For example, within Lewisham PCT in South London it has been credited with reducing missed appointments by 27 per cent over the last year. If you projected these figures nationally, the service could potentially save more than 2.7 million GP appointments a year.”

He added: “This is a great example of how interoperability between different systems can extend services for GPs and help to improve patient care.”

Tobias Alpsten, Managing Director of iPLATO, said: “EMIS has been instrumental in enabling us to reach our first million patients and delivering such great results. However, this is only a step on the way. EMIS systems hold 39 million patient records and there are more than 69 million mobile handsets in the UK today, each owned by a person for whom health is important. It is our view that there is a lot of room for growth. To address this opportunity 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 mobile health services. We expect many of these new and exciting services to be delivered in partnership with universities, hospitals, clinical experts and other innovation companies across the world”.

- Ends -

Notes for Editors:

About EMIS

EMIS is the UK’s leading supplier of IT systems to GPs, providing the software that holds the medical records for 39 million NHS patients nationwide. Around 56 per cent of GPs in the UK currently use EMIS software.

The company has a 20-year history of innovation within the UK primary care market. Founded by GPs Dr Peter Sowerby and Dr David Stables, its guiding ethos is that the software used by GP surgeries should be “written by doctors, for doctors”.

EMIS is responsible for a number of innovatory products and services for GPs and patients, including EMIS Access - the only online appointment bookings service currently available within the NHS; a groundbreaking electronic prescription management service and a shared data system that enables secure GP-to-GP exchange of patient records.

iPLATO Mobile services reach 1 Million patients in the UK

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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Tower Hamlets PCT uses text messaging to boost attendance for breast cancer screening

[29] 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

NEW PARTNER INQUIRIES

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: [4] info@iplato.net

Barking & Dagenham Surgeries use iPLATO for health promotion & appointment reminders

[29] 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

Press contact:

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

iPLATO to attend INPS NVUG Conference 15th - 16th November 2007

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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Lambeth GPs use Text Messaging to boost Flu Immunisations

Lambeth PCT 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: [91] nick.fairclough@lambethpct.nhs.uk

Missed appointments cut by 27% across sixteen surgeries

Lewisham PCT 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
[92] Kelly.scanlon@lewishampct.nhs.uk

City & Hackney GPs use Text Messaging to Engage with Smokers

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
[93] ian.quigley@chpct.nhs.uk

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

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

Management in Practice - London 5th September 2007 Business Design Centre

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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iPLATO to exhibit at the 14th Annual EMIS NUG Conference 12th -14th September 2007

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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iPLATO text messaging to cover 165,000 patients in Hammersmith & Fulham

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

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

Text messaging used to provide free malaria information to UK travellers

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: [96] www.malariahotspots.co.uk

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Innovative use of Text Messaging in Childhood Immunisation

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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iPLATO Text Messaging: Six times more effective for reaching Smokers

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.

iPLATO text messaging solution set to save NHS Millions

Figures released by the Developing Patient Partnerships (DPP) today have indicated that an estimated 16 million GP appointments are missed every year in the UK. With research suggesting that the average cost of a missed appointment within general practice estimated at £18; this represents a collective loss of nearly £300 million to the NHS each year.

iPLATO has developed a text messaging solution specifically for the Health Care Service, which works by sending patients a text message reminder direct to their mobile phones. The solution, called Patient Care Messaging, has proven to reduce the DNA (did not attend) rate of GP surgeries by between 26% and 50 %.

The system which fully integrates to a GP’s booking system has been commercially available for the last two years and is currently being used in sites within twelve Primary Care Trusts. Despite the proven success in reducing the number of missed appointments, Patient Care Messaging has yet to be recognised centrally by the NHS as a cost effective and scalable solution to this growing problem. iPLATO is committed to improving Health Care through technology and innovation.

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iPLATO text messaging pilot cuts missed appointments at Barts and The London NHS Trust

Barts and The London NHS Trust and iPLATO hosted a knowledge sharing event on Monday the 10th of July 2006. The event brought together representatives from 13 Trusts from across London who came to listen to and discuss the initial findings from an iPLATO Patient Care Messaging pilot running at the acute trust since April 2006.

Yasmin Anwar, Service Improvement Manager at Dental and Patient Services, said “Our Patient Text Message Appointment Reminder Pilot has been running since early April, covering two specialties with typically high DNA rates (20% and 23% respectively). Our latest figures show that, of the patients who have received text message reminders, only 2.7% went on to miss their appointments, which is a dramatic improvement.”

In an informal event setting, speakers from Barts and The London elaborated on pilot findings and answered questions from attendees. Allaying many of the concerns regarding information governance was Mike Eagles, Head of Software Development at Barts and The London. Eagles mentioned that confidentiality was paramount when handling patient information and this was maintained by encrypting transmitted data, regulating text message content and gaining patient consent. “After the initial installation and integration of iPlato with our own system, there was nothing more we needed to do for it to work successfully. The messaging works in the background” commented Eagles on the fully automated and non-intrusive nature of Patient Care Messaging on PAS.

Tobias Alpsten, Managing Director of iPLATO who moderated the session said “The results of the pilot at an established trust like Barts and The London serves as an endorsement to iPLATO Patient Care Messaging. It also endorses our collaborative approach in bringing these solutions to our NHS partners. In the end, this solution is not about sending text messages as much as it is about improving healthcare through increased access, reduced waiting times and improved patient service. We are thankful that Barts and The London has given us a platform to prove that the technology and our unique approach deliver the intended benefits”.

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Notes for Editors:

About Barts and The London NHS Trust

Barts and The London NHS Trust is one of Britain’s top teaching hospital trusts. Over 500,000 people from the City, East London and further afield are treated every year. The Trust is made up of three hospitals - Barts in the City, The Royal London in Whitechapel and The London Chest Hospital in Bethnal Green. These hospitals have a long tradition of pioneering new treatments. The history of modern medicine can be traced through the many eminent physicians and surgeons amongst their alumni - from William Harvey, who discovered the circulation of the blood to names such as Langdon-Down (Down’s Syndrome) and Barnardo (child welfare). This tradition of clinical excellence continues today with Britain’s best record on mortality - 23% below what would be expected.

Lewisham Primary Care Trust launches text message appointment reminders

Lewisham PCT Lewisham Primary Care Trust has launched iPLATO Patient Care Messaging at GP surgeries throughout Lewisham. Patients at Morden Hill Surgery, Vesta Road Surgery, Muirkirk Road Surgery, Wells Park Practice, Brockley Road Surgery, Rushey Green Group Practice and the Kingfisher Surgery will receive appointment reminders and health information directly to their mobile phones. These practices became involved in this new service because they have higher levels of patients who do not attend appointments.

To access the service, which is free of charge, the patients will have to register their mobile phone number at their surgery. This will be the largest deployment of iPLATO Patient Care Messaging to date in the United Kingdom. Leaflets with further information are available at all those GP practices involved.

The Imperial College of London recently estimated that missed appointments (”Did-not-attends”) cost the NHS approximately £789 million per year. This study also suggested that the NHS could save £240 - £370 million per year by launching text appointment reminders throughout England.

“Mobile patient services are the way forward in Lewisham”, said Simon Gosney, Minor Illness Service Improvement Facilitator at Lewisham PCT. “We have an ethnically and socially very diverse population. A vast majority already uses the mobile to run their daily lives. I believe that text messaging to remind them about their appointments is a perfect first step towards building a ‘mobile relationship’ with them. In the next 12 months we aim to reduce missed appointments by 25% from where we are today and get as many patients as possible onto the system as quickly as possible.”

Lewisham Primary Care Trust chose iPLATO for its long experience in UK primary care. Patient Care Messaging is functional and secure. It improves service without adding extra work for healthcare staff and integrates seamlessly with existing systems used by GPs to book appointments and clinics. In addition to appointment reminders, GPs will use Patient Care Messaging to create and manage text campaigns to remind patients about flu-jabs and childhood immunisations, which are an important issue in Lewisham. The service is operational in ten other Primary Care Trusts where it has dramatically increased operational efficiency and the quality of care.

“Lewisham Primary Care Trust has proved to be innovative and forward-thinking by introducing Patient Care Messaging,” said Tobias Alpsten, Managing Director of iPLATO. “It is a borough that faces many challenges and we support the PCT not only with our technology but, more importantly, with our unparalleled experience in delivering radical improvements to cost efficiency and quality of care.”

Lewisham Primary Care Trust will be reviewing the effectiveness of the Text Messaging Service in March 2007, before recommending it to other GP practices 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 ,
[97] Kelly.scanlon@lewishampct.nhs.uk,
020 7206 3334

Picture available: Phone with appointment reminder on display.

City & Hackney tPCT Screened Services launches text appointment reminders

City and Hackney Primary Care Trust iPLATO, the leader in mobile healthcare applications, announced today that City & Hackney Teaching Primary Care Trust has launched Patient Care Messaging for patients attending its Screening Service. iPLATO Patient Care Messaging will help to improve the service to patients in the long term: Care will delivered more efficiently and therefore be of better quality and less expensive. iPLATO Patient Care Messaging will be available to subscribing patients free of charge from March 1st onwards for City & Hackney tPCT’s Locomotor Service.

Locomotor is a specialist muscular-skeletal service that provides an alternative to potentially lengthy hospital waits. Appointment reminder messages will only be sent to patients opting into the service. City & Hackney tPCT hopes for a rapid growth of the subscriber base as it should keep the Did-Not-Attend (DNA) Rate low to provide patients with optimal access to the Screening Service.

“Mobile patient services is really the way forward” says Sham Rahim, Project Manager for Booking & Choice at the Teaching PCT. “We believe that text messaging to remind patients about their appointments is a perfect first step towards building a ‘mobile relationship’ with them. We aim to reduce missed appointments by xx% from where we are today. We wish to get as many patients as possible onto the system as quickly as possible. To achieve this we will actively call our patients to gain their consent and distribute patient information leaflets to all GP surgeries in City & Hackney. Patients are encouraged to let both their referring GP and the Screened Services team know that they wish to receive reminders.”

“City & Hackney Teaching Primary Care Trust once more proved to be innovative and forward-thinking,” says Tobias Alpsten, Managing Director of iPLATO. “The care provided by the Screened Services Team is similar to secondary care as it is based on referrals from GPs. This makes effective mobile patients services especially challenging because of the on/off relationship between the patient and the healthcare provider. We will support the City & Hackney Teaching Primary Care Trust with our technology but, more importantly, with our unparalleled experience in delivering radical improvements to cost efficiency and quality of care.

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Text flu-jab reminders a success in Lambeth with 44% patient participation

Using iPLATO’s Patient Care Messaging Dr Masterton & Partners practice in Lambeth has discovered that mobile messaging is the most effective tool for rapid communication with patients about immunisation. In a recent flu-jab campaign the practice administrator identified 152 patients due for a flu jab and sent them a text message requesting them to turn up for immunisation the following day or to decline the flu-jab clinic by reply text message. Within two minutes of sending the practice had received feedback from 32 of the contacted patients. In total 44% of the contacted patients responded to the flu jab campaign either by declining the clinic or by showing up, making it one of the most effective flu jab campaigns ever undertaken by the practice.

“We have been using iPLATO’s Patient Care Messaging for automatic appointment reminders since March 2005, says Adrian James-Morse, the practice IT manager. In this case we used the system’s group mailing feature and the result was remarkable from the surgery’s and our patients’ perspective. The mobile channel offers unparalleled speed in contacting people wherever they may be with a clear and actionable message. Many patients answered the flu-jab reminder with their mobile proving the medium is a two way interaction tool rather than just one-way broadcasting. With other means of communication - letter or calling - this campaign method does not only compare well on speed, communication quality and response rate, it is also cheaper to produce and manage.”

“Dr Masterton & Partners has really done a good job designing a powerful flu-jab campaign using existing features of our text messaging platform says Toby Gockel, Business Development Manager at iPLATO. Looking at the ability for practices to target certain patient groups with up-to-the-second messages really speaks volumes for the platform which is designed to work also at significantly higher messaging volumes as would be the case, for example, in a pandemic. It also puts the GPs firmly in the driver seat in looking after their patients who do not have to rely only on messages from more generic sources such as TV and radio”.

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iPLATO Patient Care Messaging gets voice reminders through partnership

London, 8th November 2005: Business communication specialist, Premiere Global Services (PGS), and leading mobile healthcare messaging company iPLATO, today announced an alliance aimed at broadening their healthcare reminder offering to customers in the UK and Northern Europe. Under the agreement, iPLATO’s Patient Care Messaging service will now offer voice reminders alongside its traditional text messaging services, whilst PGS will integrate iPLATO’s mobile technology services into its healthcare Alerts and Notifications offering. Research shows that ten million GP appointments, four million practice nurse appointments and seven million outpatient appointments are missed annually and 30 per cent of these missed meetings are down to patients simply forgetting.

“For some patient groups such as the elderly, text messaging is simply not appropriate,” says Tobias Alpsten, managing director, iPLATO. “This alliance gives us the opportunity to offer voice messages through a market leading platform, to patients’ fixed line phones. Essentially, this deal makes us a more complete patient communication provider and enables us to compete more effectively for national contracts.”

“We are delighted to be partnering with iPLATO to further develop our Alerts and Notifications service in the healthcare sector,” comments Simon Bushell, general manager, Premiere Global Services, UK and Northern Europe. “Our experience has shown that voice messaging is a cost effective and compelling delivery medium for patient appointment reminders and other notification and confirmation applications. This partnership brings together the leading players in the market to deliver a comprehensive, highly integrated and scalable offering to the healthcare sector”,

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Notes for Editors:

About Premiere Global Services (formerly Xpedite)

Premiere Global Services (formerly Xpedite) is a leading global provider of innovative business communications and data services. Customers use our ASP platform to process and deliver large quantities of individualized, business critical information via enhanced Email, Fax, Voice and SMS. Premiere Global Services offers outsourced document delivery, data capture, alerts/notifications and campaign marketing solutions that automate customers’ business processes and improve efficiency levels enterprise-wide. We also offer a full suite of VoIP-based collaboration sessions and conferencing solutions, including automated, operator-assisted and Web collaboration services that enable customers to communicate real-time via our advanced, open standards global conferencing platform.

Premiere Global serves more than 46,000 corporate accounts in nearly every business sector, throughout 19 countries worldwide. Our corporate headquarters is located at 3399 Peachtree Road NE, Suite 700, Atlanta, GA 30326.

Additional information can be found at [98] www.premiereglobal.co.uk or contact our local office in the United Kingdom on +44 (0)20 7444 0700.

Missed appointments substantially reduced for the City Road Medical Centre

A new Patient Care Messaging system from iPLATO is having a significant impact on absenteeism, according to early results from the Islington Primary Care Trust, this was announced at a recent eHealth event in London.

The Clinical information Systems and Electronic Records and eHealth 2004 conference and exhibition was attended by electronic records and IT managers, GPs and practice managers, clinicians and health managers with a particular interest in IT. In a presentation made by Simon Jones, Islington PCT’s Primary Care ICT Manager and Steve Colman, Practice Manager at the City Road Medical Centre the audience heard early results from the pilot indicating that Patient Care Messaging has the potential to reduce the ‘did not attend’ (DNA) rate to zero.

iPLATO’s Patient Care Messaging system is being piloted at three Islington PCT sites - City Road, Goodinge and Clerkenwell and is also being trialled by the North East London Mental Health Trust. The three Islington sites will truly test the effectiveness of iPLATO’s Patient Care Messaging system as they are spread geographically across the borough and all have differing list sizes and patient demographics.

City Road Medial Centre is an inner city practice with five doctors and two nurses in a relatively deprived area. Although it had not undertaken specific steps to tackle patient DNAs, its efforts to improve patient access had reduced the number of missed appointments prior to the pilot. Therefore its DNA rate of 20 per week was relatively low in comparison to the national average (of 50 per week); however, on the basis of £18 per appointment this still adds up to about £21,000 per annum.

The City Road Medical Centre pilot was launched at the end of August and since then there has been an unquestionable improvement in the number of DNAs. In June, July and August the average equalled 12 ‘no shows’ per week, however after introducing Patient Care Messaging and by the third week in September DNAs at the practice gradually fell to zero.

Islington PCT does not expect Patient Care Messaging to be a miracle cure for missed appointments, as Simon Jones, Primary Care ICT Manager for the PCT explains: “It’s unavoidable that some patients will still fail to inform the surgeries that they can’t make their appointment and some patients do not own a mobile phone. However the surgery has publicised the pilot in the local press and through leaflets and waiting room posters. Patients are also asked for their mobile numbers at reception so that they can be included on the reminder system - they can of course opt out if they wish.”

Commenting on the relevance of SMS reminders and the PCM pilot at City Road Medical Centre, Practice Manager Stephen Colman said: “There has been an increasing trend for patients to give us a mobile number, and for many mobiles are the preferred point of contact. Although it is still early days, the fall in the number of DNAs speaks for itself.

The PCM system is accessed with a web browser on a secure website within NHSNet and the automatic appointment reminders work by extracting the relevant information from EMIS, the surgery’s clinical system, to create an SMS message which is sent from the secure server to the SMS gateway operated by Orange. Messages are sent out in batches twice a day, 24 hours in advance of the patients’ appointments, for example patients with morning appointments are sent a reminder at 8am the preceding day and reminders for afternoon appointments are sent at 12am the day before.

The patient can then choose to respond to the reminder by confirming, rescheduling or cancelling the appointment by either calling the healthcare site or replying with an SMS message. If an SMS message is sent in reply, it is converted by iPLATO’s system into an email and delivered to the healthcare site’s administration.

Stephen continues: “All the staff operating the PCM system received comprehensive onsite training from iPLATO so they are all aware of its capabilities beyond the automatic appointment reminders.”

Commenting on the viability of PCM and the possibilities for commercial use after the pilot, Simon Jones said: “The system could also be used to remind new patients about their registration appointments; high-risk patients to come in for flu jabs; new mothers about post-natal clinics; and interaction with people that are hard to reach - the so-called ‘excluded’ and ‘disengaged’ patient groups.”

Arjen Soetekouw of iPLATO commented: “Improving access to healthcare and reducing absenteeism in the UK is a very pertinent issue and Patient Care Messaging offers GP practices and hospitals a very effective tool in the kit bag. It is a guaranteed way of reaching patients without wasting healthcare resources as it requires no intervention from healthcare staff.

“It is not just a ‘quick win’ solution but an easily maintainable system that guarantees results. It is also a service that can be used in conjunction with other IT systems, as and when they are introduced according to the NPfIT schedule, to improve the efficiency and quality of healthcare in the UK.”

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New Patient Care Messaging technology to combat £ 162 million lost in missed appointments

iPLATO, specialist developers in mobile and wireless technology applications, has launched the next generation of Patient Care Messaging (PCM), a new system that integrates with existing healthcare administrative and clinical systems to send automated appointment reminders to patients.

The new patient service was launched at a celebratory occasion in London on August 26th, attended by a multitude of public and private healthcare organisations. iPLATO presented the new version of Patient Care Messaging to an interested crowd and formally launched the service by sending a text message to all people present.

Over the past few years absenteeism has been highlighted as a serious issue and the Doctor Patient Partnership has, since 1999, been running a campaign to highlight missed GP and practice nurse appointments. Its independent research* revealed that UK patients miss 13 million GP and practice nurse appointments per year, the reason most frequently cited being simply: ‘I forgot’.

With each GP appointment estimated to cost at least £18 it is estimated that, missed doctors appointments cost the NHS a staggering £162 million a year.

“With the public announcement of the National Programme for IT (NPfIT) two years ago NHS Trusts are now obliged to take certain steps to introduce new IT systems and services to benefit both NHS staff and patients,” explains Arjen Soetekouw of iPLATO. “Appointment reminders have not been included as a requirement of the NPfIT but one of its major aims is the provision of an electronic booking (Choose and Book) service that will allow patients to book their appointments, at a time convenient to them.

“iPLATO’s PCM system is designed to complement the Choose and Book service. With a national roll out of PCM it would easily be a valuable extension to the national IT infrastructure, as both initiatives have similar goals and require similar patient data.”

Patient Care Messaging aims to proactively reduce absenteeism and improve the quality of care. It is based on iPLATO’s SMS (short message service) technology and runs over Orange’s gateway services which control the message delivery to thousands of patients. A server system managed by iPLATO is hosted within NHSnet, the NHS’ existing secure administration network. It collates data from the clinical systems and transfers these into text messages to be sent to the patient’s mobile phones at a set interval prior to their appointment.

The patient can then subsequently choose to respond to the reminder by confirming, rescheduling or cancelling the appointment by either calling the healthcare site or replying with an SMS message. If an SMS message is sent in reply, it is converted by iPLATO’s system into an email and delivered to the healthcare site’s administration.

iPLATO has several pilot projects running with NHS Trusts across London, including the Islington Primary Care Trust and the North East London Mental Health Trust, which so far are receiving very positive feedback indicating that the Patient Care Messaging is having a positive impact on absenteeism.

Arjen Soetekouw of iPLATO commented: “Healthcare managers have by now tried a number of different ways to reduce absenteeism, for example, telephone calls and letters to remind patients but these methods are usually relatively ineffective or disproportionately time consuming. With our Patient Care Messaging system, appointment reminders are automatically sent, without the need for intervention from healthcare staff, to patients’ mobile phones, which are inherently personal devices and thus always carried by the user. A guaranteed way of reaching patients without wasting healthcare resources.

“With the ongoing National Programme and the emphasis on improving healthcare services the issue of absenteeism is becoming increasingly pertinent and a problem that if tackled appropriately could help eliminate wasted resources.

“Patient Care Messaging is a means for healthcare organisations to effectively reduce the number of ‘did not attend’ patients. It is not just a ‘quick win’ solution but a maintainable system that guarantees results. It is also a system that can be used in conjunction with other IT solutions, as and when they are introduced according to the NPfIT schedule, to improve the efficiency of quality of healthcare in the UK.”

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Notes for Editors:

*The Doctor Patient Partnership (DPP) and Institute of Healthcare Management survey (August 2004), conducted for the DPP’s ‘Keep it or Cancel it’ campaign, revealed:

9 million missed GP appointments per year
Just under 4 million missed practice nurse appointments per year
Missed GP appointments cost around £162 million per year (estimating that a GP appointment costs £18)
37% of GP practices believe that reminding patients about their appointments could reduce these figures
67% of practices think that patients ‘forget’ their appointments.

The survey was conducted with 707 GP surgeries throughout the UK.

URL to article: http://www.iplato.net/news-appointment-reminders-and-mobile-health-promotion/nhs-tower-hamlets-uses-text-messaging-to-boost-attendance-rate-for-cervical-screening.html

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