Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust has published a prior information notice for the procurement of a patient engagement portal solution, with a budget of £800,000.
It comes as part of the trust’s efforts to increase its digital maturity, in which a PEP has been highlighted as a “key deliverable”. As such, the trust is looking for a solution that can interoperate with multiple electronic patient record solutions, with the notice outlining a number of essential requirements.
These requirements include: the ability for patients to book, schedule and cancel appointments via direct integration with EPRs; patient access to care plans and assessments via the portal; the creation of custom questionnaires and forms for the collation of clinical information linked to the patient record; the ability for patients and carers to view letters as well as two way communication between patients and clinical teams; and the automation of administrative tasks and notifications.
The notice also adds the need to: allow patients to manage their portal account and edit preferences; provide links to local and national advice; proxy access capabilities ensuring records can be accessed on behalf of the patient, with the patient being able to select the areas of the portal they wish to share; NHS App integration; and to continue to meet the requirements of the Wayfinder programme.
The trust also notes that “all patient data must be held in the EPR to maintain a full clinical record” and the PEP solution should already be in use within an existing NHS trust, “preferably a mental health/community trust”, in order to be considered.
Suppliers are invited to attend any one of the preliminary market engagement sessions, which are set to be held on 23, 24 and 28 January. The sessions will be conducted virtually with the aim to understand the different solutions available within the market. Find out more about this opportunity and its key requirements here.
Patient portals: the wider trend
Last month, Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS trust reported that more than 135,000 of their registered patients are now using their patient portal, with 20,000 of those patients using it regularly. The trust also noted a reduction in paper letters by nearly half a million, since the introduction of the portal in 2023.
In a recent HTN Now discussion, we spoke to a panel of digital leaders on health tech and innovations for the future. Dr Penny Kechagioglou, chief clinical information officer and deputy chief medical officer at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire shared how her organisation is currently looking at ways to introduce automated pathways and developing its patient portal capabilities around two-way messaging between patients and clinicians.
Finally, the Dental Access Portal is being piloted at Powys Teaching Health Board, to provide a central platform for Welsh Health Boards to allocate places for routine NHS dental treatment. Those in the Powys region who are already on a Health Board dental waiting list have been automatically added to the portal and prioritised based on when they joined the existing list, with all new patients also invited to apply for the portal.
