Following a successful three-month pilot with 42 GP practices, health tech company Accurx has announced integration between two of its features with the NHS App: Batch Messaging, which allows practices to send the same text message to a large group of patients, and Batch Florey, supporting practices to send out patient questionnaires.
Accurx reports that over 51 million patients across nearly 80 percent of GP practices in England using Accurx Batch Messaging are now able to access messages sent from their GP via the NHS App.
If the patient has the NHS App downloaded with notifications enabled, any Batch Message or Batch Florey received will automatically go to the app with a push notification. For patients who do not have the app installed or who have switched notifications off, the message will default to being sent through SMS. If the patient does not read the message in the NHS App within three hours, the message is also sent via SMS.
Jacob Haddad, CEO and co-founder, comments that the move “will go a long way in supporting NHS England’s Primary Care Recovery Plan” and “aims to empower millions of patients, by directing them to the NHS App where they can take more control of their care. Now, patients will have another trusted route to contact, and be contacted by, their healthcare provider. It’s an exciting step towards quicker, easier primary care access.”
He added: “We’re also pleased to continue our work with the NHS App team, since the integration of Patient Triage last year. We’ve collaborated closely on this latest integration and have worked hard to ensure all patients will receive the same quality of care, in parallel to traditional access routes.”
Dr Satya Raghuvanshi, VP of clinical at Accurx, discussed how technology can support patient flow in a feature for HTN in August, stating that “better, faster communication methods that make patient flow easier can make a world of difference during resource strapped times and limited bandwidth for innovation”. Read what Satya had to say here.
In other news around the NHS App, last month we covered how NHS England is planning an independent review into 10 healthcare apps in order to consider enhancements for the NHS App.
