Patients Know Best (PKB), the UK’s largest Personal Health Record platform, today announced the launch of its Population Health Management (PHM) Engine. This new capability is designed to support NHS organisations and clinical research organisations in accelerating clinical trial recruitment, assisting them in meeting new government targets set for March 2026⁽¹⁾.

The PHM Engine offers significant benefits to both healthcare providers and patients by enabling the automated identification of specific patient cohorts for relevant clinical trials and personalised health guidance. The development is made possible by Patients Know Best's single patient record, which aggregates and clinically codes data from multiple sources including primary care, secondary care, community healthcare organisations, and patients themselves. 

This capability builds upon the recent launch of PKB’s GP Data integration, which offers all adults in England the option to store a copy of their GP data in their PKB record. PKB enriches this data by applying SNOMED CT codes for conditions, medications, and other clinical information. The PHM Engine then utilises this coded data for automated cohort identification and to make available complex clinical information as simple, actionable prompts for patients.

A key application of the PHM Engine is its ability to streamline clinical trial recruitment. The engine can:

• Identify for patients the clinical trials they meet specific inclusion criteria for.
• Show patients information about relevant trials directly within their record.
• Support a patient to share their data with research teams if the patient has an interest in participation.

As a citizen-managed record, patients have the ability to decide how and where their data is shared - this is at the heart of being able to remove barriers to clinical trial awareness, whilst ensuring data sharing and opting in to trials remains within the remit of the patient to decide.

In addition to supporting clinical trials, NHS customers can configure  PHM Engine to address various other clinical priorities, such as medicines optimisation, patient support programmes, and chronic condition monitoring. The engine is designed to integrate seamlessly into existing clinical workflows without requiring additional clinical time for training or operation. Rule criteria for patient cohorts are defined by clinical teams based on their service needs, with configuration and application managed by the PKB specialist team. Once configured, the PHM Engine is embedded within the platform in order to operate automatically and anonymously, ensuring patient privacy.

Sally Rennison, CCO at Patients Know Best, commented, "The NHS faces a clear requirement to advance medical research and meet efficiency targets, with a government commitment for Trusts to achieve these by March 2026. Our PHM Engine provides a practical solution to streamline the process of identifying and engaging patients for clinical trials. This not only supports the acceleration of vital research but also the democratisation of research amongst harder to reach groups."

⁽¹⁾https://www.gov.uk/government/news/unprecedented-boost-for-clinical-trials-under-10-year-health-plan