Welcome to August’s instalment of our development blog. This month, organisations can let patients manage their own appointments and we’re making messaging more accessible and easier to use.
Appointments can be changed in partner booking systems
Organisations can send a link in a HL7 SIU appointment message, which will allow their patients to change or cancel their appointments.
Patients will see a ‘Manage’ option on their appointment which will take them to their organisation’s partner booking system to make changes. Once the patient is done, they can return to their record.
This feature will be available for users once a customer’s preferred appointment management partner has completed their components of the integration. This work has been assessed and is being scheduled by a number of partners. Please contact your preferred appointment management partner and Patients Know Best will be happy to talk them through the available APIs to enable this workflow.
Organisations will soon have the option to use messaging with their patients to manage appointments if they don’t work with a partner booking system. You can read more about this in our July blog.
Messaging is now easier to use
We have improved messaging to make it easier and more intuitive to use. The changes are:
- The look and feel is similar to other messaging applications, such as WhatsApp and Messenger.
- The page looks great on all screen sizes.
- The page meets the accessibility standards set out in Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA.
- The message subject is now at the top of the page for clarity.
- There is an ‘Options’ button with available actions for the user. For example, adding additional users to the conversation or handing over the conversation to another clinician.
