Dear PKB Community,
As another week passes in the fight against COVID-19, I wanted to share an update on how our customers are progressing with their plans to communicate remotely and mobilise patients to self-manage their care:
WALES
Swansea Bay University Health Board
- Up to 100 paediatric patients with complex needs are being invited to use PKB to communicate with their specialist clinical team and use messaging.
Hywel Dda University Health Board
- An interstitial Lung Disease/ Respiratory nurse is obtaining email addresses for all the patients within this service to register with PKB. This site has been configured to share the PKB COVID-19 care plan with patients.
Cardiff and Vale University Health Board
- Plans are progressing to register 13,000 follow up audiology patients using email by mid-April. This will allow communication using secure messaging, virtual triaging with digital questionnaires – whilst helping to keep patients safe at home.
ENGLAND
Connected Nottinghamshire
- Sherwood Forest is adding carers to records so they can keep in touch and be updated about patients in self-isolation. This project started today.
Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust – Care Information Exchange (CIE)
- The Trust is planning how to most quickly register patients to access the 2 million+ records North West London stored on PKB.
- The HIV team has been using the consultation and messaging features for all 861 registered patients to let them know how they will be working with patients in the current situation.
- The Cardiology service will register 12,000 patients and share the COVID-19 care plan to explain how to manage their care from home.
Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation Trust – Care Information Exchange (CIE)
- The Heart Failure team is contacting all 473 patients to advise they will be using the consultation, messaging and information sharing features to communicate with them remotely.
- The Trust is creating a video about how they are using PKB for remote monitoring to support wider usage.
University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust
- Last week registrations more than doubled (compared to the weekly average) with over 600 new registrations. This was a result of the HL7 feed including emails for new patients so they get an email invitation as well as the letter invitation and 2,000 patients invited to register for PKB by bulk loading their email address.
- A further 9,500 email addresses the Trust holds have been uploaded today.
Akin to many other countries across the world, the U.K. Government’s message is clear:
Stay at home. Protect the NHS. Save lives.
We have always advocated the importance of ‘digital first’ pathways that put patients in control but COVID-19 has firmly placed this subject centre stage. Our customers are mobilising patients and healthcare teams by creating PKB personal health records at scale and pace. To support patients who are new to PKB, we have introduced an infographic to demonstrate how patients can use PKB to safely manage their health from home during the outbreak.
PKB can be used to manage all elements of care – for example, to:
- log symptoms and keep a journal any conditions
- record details of any medications and allergies
- access care plans (including our COVID-19 care plan) to follow the guidance given by health teams
- check test results (including COVID-19 results where shared by providers)
- upload and share monitoring data – and assess if/ when to seek help
- communicate with health teams online using secure messaging or video consultations
- assess when it’s time to seek support if required
- quickly enable healthcare professionals with accurate information by sharing their PKB record for more joined-up clinical care wherever they are in the world at this time.
Where COVID-19 is suspected, patients can monitor their symptoms and share their record for support and assessment from a distance. For example, with their GP, hospital consultant, 111/ emergency services, or carers/ family members, who may be able to provide support to get prescriptions or groceries. Should the need arise to go into hospital, patients can also be confident healthcare professionals will have access to an accurate personal health record, without the need to chase information from various providers.
Our Success Team has also been working closely with customers to ensure all healthcare professionals (including GP’s) are trained and supported to remotely manage patients online with PKB. To do this, we have created a series of short training videos to demonstrate how they can register and navigate the platform.
Over the coming weeks and months, we will continue to do our bit to support users and frontline staff. Again, if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us, or if you are aware of other ways in which we can help others with our software and services, please let us know by contacting our support team.
Stay healthy and safe,
Mohammad Al-Ubaydli
CEO, Patients Know Best
www.patientsknowbest.com