North East London to deploy PKB as Personal Health Record
North East London Health and Care Partnership is the second ICS to utilise the London Personal Health Record framework to deploy Patients Know Best (PKB) to their patients.
Back in 2020, London became the first region to use the Health System Support Framework (HSSF) established by NHS England, to run a regional Personal Health Record (PHR) procurement that was subsequently awarded to Patients Know Best. North West London, an existing PKB customer was the first ICS to utilise this framework agreement to continue to supply PKB as the PHR of choice for it’s patients. Now, in 2022, North East London (NEL) have joined them in contracting with PKB to begin their rollout of the Personal Health Record, enabling their patient population of 2.2 million citizens and all health and care organisations to utilise PKB.
The ICS wide rollout builds on the achievements of their pilot project, a Digital Recovery Platform for Severe Mental Illness patients in the City of London Corporation and borough of Hackney. This programme has focused on collaborative working with their service users to support their mental health management, providing a single place to view and share information with others involved in their own recovery journey. This has already resulted in one win, two highly commended and one finalist position in recent HSJ awards for their cross-sector programme of work.
NEL is also the first NHS locality, already truly leading integrated care, as data is exchanged across primary, secondary/mental health services (East London NHS Foundation Trust), as well as local voluntary care organisations (The Advocacy Project and Core Arts and Sports Programme). This accomplishment, via the City and Hackney programme, can now be extended across the ICS to cover more patients, conditions and organisations.
"This new project with PKB will provide a single consistent service for patients in north east London and we look forward to rolling it out in the coming months."
Martin Wallis, Digital Programme Manager for NHS North East London Clinical Commissioning Group and North East London Health and Care Partnership, said: “The Patient Held Record puts patients in charge of their own care and make it easier for them to work with those who care for them. The record will have information about their own health and wellbeing and provide access to health apps and medical expertise. This new project with PKB will provide a single consistent service for patients in north east London and we look forward to rolling it out in the coming months.”
Utilising PKB is aiming to help ensure there are efficiency savings with a single provider for the service and a consistent approach for local patients in accessing and using services. Patients are at the heart of the use of their data and PKB’s PHR will greatly support the change towards supporting patients to interact with their records, their services and the professionals involved in their care.
In anticipation of this rollout, and to support existing users of the platform, NEL has already enabled the PKB & NHS App integration, so that current and future users will be able to access their Personal Health Records behind the NHS front door. Patients can start to register from today, with additional data flows being established over the coming months.
Timescales for the rollout and the phases that organisations will come on board and start contributing data are being determined over the coming weeks, with pathfinder teams building the blueprint for clinical transformation and service delivery that can be scaled across the region.
PKB CEO, Dr Mohammad Al-Ubaydli said: “The London PHR is the largest in the world. North East London residents already receive hundreds of thousands of test results a month from North West London providers. Now NEL’s providers will be able to release millions of test results to patients in NWL and the rest of the UK who use PKB. The preparation and planning that has gone into NEL’s decision to move forward with a PHR, and specifically PKB as their unified platform with other regions, gives us confidence in their commitment to, and ability to make real improvements to their patients’ experiences and outcomes. We are looking forward to a long and successful programme in partnership with them.”
"The London PHR is the largest in the world. North East London residents already receive hundreds of thousands of test results a month from North West London providers. Now NEL’s providers will be able to release millions of test results to patients in NWL and the rest of the UK who use PKB."
By joining North West London in using PKB, any patients who have received care across these two regions historically or in the future will benefit from having a unified PHR, containing all of their data to be accessible whenever and wherever is needed through PKB’s model of having a single record for all data.
To find out more about the PKB platform and plans for expansion in NEL, or to learn about City and Hackney’s existing work, please come speak to both teams at Rewired 2022, with PKB on Stand C24.
