Midlands PCT Uses Mobile to Generate More Than 1,000 Qualified Referrals to Health Checks

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.

Funded and overseen by Heart of Birmingham Teaching Primary Care Trust, the campaign achieved 44% response rate from target patients underlining the fundamental appeal of vascular checks for patients aged between 40 and 74 as well as the suitability of text messaging as the primary tool for cost effective and streamlined engagement with large numbers of patients.

NHS Health Checks aim to reduce risks from developing vascular disease and to provide early detection in order to significantly reduce mortality rates. The national programme requires PCTs around England to implement processes and systems to screen patients aged between 40 and 74 every three years. The participating surgeries in Heart of Birmingham Teaching Primary Care Trust achieved their challenging NHS Health Checks target for 2009/2010 through the help of this innovative technology.

Tobias Alpsten, Managing Director of iPLATO Healthcare said: “We are excited about working in partnership with Heart of Birmingham Teaching Primary Care Trust and the GP surgeries to develop innovative ways to communicate with patients. Many PCTs find patient engagement and enrolment for Health Checks and other screening services challenging. Through iPLATO Patient Care Messaging, which enables smart health promotion using SMS, IVR and call centre, we can help optimise the end-to-end process from data collection/cleansing all the way to enrolment and retention.”

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