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.

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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.

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London, June 8th 2010 - iPLATO Healthcare, the leader in mHealth, announced today that a smart health promotion campaign delivered in partnership with 24 GP surgeries using iPLATO Patient Care Messaging generated 1,850 qualified referrals to NHS Health Checks in just four weeks. Supported by the iPLATO team the average participating surgery spent less than 1 hour on delivering this campaign which resulted in 1 qualified referral per minute of surgery effort.

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London, March 2^nd 2010, iPLATO Healthcare, the leader in mobile health today announced the launch of mSite - a new module of iPLATO Patient Care Messaging. mSite, provided free of charge to licensed GP surgeries, will enable each surgery to create their own mobile internet site to inform patients about opening hours, contacts details, access maps and out of hours services.

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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.

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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.  [Read More]

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.

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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.

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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.  [Read More]

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.    [Read More]

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.  [Read More]

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.
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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%.  [Read More]

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.   [Read More]

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.  [Read More]

Please see below a selection of useful links:

• NHS Choices
• Department of Health
• NHS Immunisation
• NHS Smoke free

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

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EMIS accredited partner iPLATO Healthcare revealed that coverage of their Patient Care Messaging services has risen to over one million GP patients.  [Read More]

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.  [Read More]

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.  [Read More]

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.  [Read More]

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.  [Read More]

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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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