Overview

Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust has transformed how women engage with maternity services by creating a single digital front door through its Patient Engagement Portal, integrated with the NHS App.  Powered by Patients Know Best, this personal health record platform combines administrative functionality with advanced interactive tools which enable clinical engagement and educational support.

Delivered across three acute hospital sites and two community birthing units, the programme provides women with access to trusted information, personalised care planning, digital communication, and maternity support throughout pregnancy and postnatal care.

The service went live in March 2026 and has already achieved significant adoption and engagement across the maternity population.

The Challenge

Like many NHS maternity services, information, communication and support were available through multiple disconnected routes.

Women accessed support through a combination of:

• telephone calls
• paper information leaflets
• websites
• appointments
• separate communication platforms
• independently sourced online information

Whilst these services worked well individually, the overall experience could feel fragmented. Women often needed to navigate multiple systems and information sources throughout their maternity journey.

The Trust recognised an opportunity to redesign maternity engagement by creating a single digital front door that would improve accessibility, support personalised care, and provide women with trusted information when they needed it.

Our Approach

The programme was designed around a simple principle:

Give women one place to access maternity information, communication, and support.

Using the Trust's existing Patient Engagement Portal (PKB), integrated with the NHS App, the team introduced:

• A comprehensive maternity resource library
• Personalised Care and Support Plans (PCSPs)
• Integrated maternity chat (using PKB’s secure messaging function)
• Maternity unit video tours
• Multilingual Information resources
• Digital communication and engagement tools

Importantly, the programme was delivered using a digital-first but not digital-only approach. Women who preferred traditional routes continued to access support through existing telephone, face-to-face, and community maternity services.

The programme was co-designed with the Maternity and Neonatal Voices Partnership (MNVP) and clinically led by the Trust's Digital Midwives, ensuring the service reflected the needs of women, families, and frontline teams.

Early Results

Although the service has only been live since March 2026, adoption has been strong.

Registration and Engagement

• 4,732 women registered
• Approximately 69% of active maternity patients onboarded
• 1929  monthly active users
• 674 weekly active users
• 23% of monthly users return more than once each month

These figures demonstrate that women are not simply registering for the service but are continuing to engage throughout their maternity journey.

Live Maternity Chat

Within the first three months:

• 465 maternity conversations initiated
• 2,424 messages exchanged
• 58% of messages sent by women
• 90% of staff responses read within 24 hours

The asynchronous nature of the service allows women to access support around work, childcare, and family commitments whilst helping to reduce incoming calls and preserve telephone capacity for urgent concerns.

Financial and Operational Benefits

The programme enabled the Trust to decommission a separate maternity communication platform, delivering an estimated recurrent saving of £90,000 per annum whilst simplifying the digital estate and improving the patient experience.

Reducing Health Inequalities and Improving Access

A key objective of the programme was to ensure that digital innovation improved access to maternity services rather than creating additional barriers for women and families.

Maternity services support a diverse population with varying levels of digital confidence, health literacy, language needs, and access to technology. Recognising this, accessibility and inclusion were built into the design of the service from the outset.

The programme adopted a digital-first but not digital-only approach. Whilst women were encouraged to use the Patient Engagement Portal where appropriate, existing routes to care remained available throughout implementation, including telephone support, face-to-face appointments, and community-based maternity services. This ensured women could choose how they accessed support based on their individual circumstances and preferences.

To improve accessibility and support informed decision-making, the maternity resource library includes:

• trusted, clinically approved information
• Multilingual resources
• maternity and birthing unit video tours
• personalised care planning resources
• links to national maternity guidance

The introduction of maternity unit video tours helps women familiarise themselves with care environments before attending appointments or giving birth, reducing uncertainty and supporting confidence.

The integrated live maternity chat service (using PKB’s secure messaging function) provides flexible access to support between 8am and 6pm, allowing women to seek advice around work, childcare, and family commitments. Because communication is asynchronous, women can access support without waiting on the phone for non-urgent queries.

Recognising that access to digital services depends on access to connectivity, the Trust partnered with Good Things Foundation's National Databank initiative to provide free mobile data SIM cards for eligible women throughout their maternity journey. This helps reduce digital exclusion and ensures that financial barriers do not prevent women from accessing information, support, and communication.

By embedding accessibility, choice, and inclusion into every stage of the programme, the Trust has sought to ensure that digitally enabled maternity care improves equity of access and supports better outcomes for all women and families.

Why This Matters

This programme demonstrates that digitally enabled maternity transformation is about far more than technology.

By bringing information, communication, personalised care planning, and support together in one place, Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust has created a more connected maternity experience for women whilst supporting frontline teams and reducing duplication.

Importantly, the model has been developed using existing NHS infrastructure and can be adapted and replicated by other organisations looking to improve maternity engagement and create a single digital front door for women and families.

Lessons Learned

1. Make it a service transformation programme, not a technology deployment

One of the most important lessons from the programme was that success came from focusing on the maternity journey rather than the technology itself.

Women do not want multiple systems, portals, and communication routes. They want simple access to information, support, and communication when they need it. By focusing on creating a single digital front door rather than implementing individual digital tools, the Trust was able to create a more connected and intuitive experience for women and families.

2. Clinical leadership is critical

The involvement of the Trust's Digital Midwives was fundamental to the success of the programme.

Their clinical leadership helped ensure the solution reflected real operational challenges, supported frontline teams, and remained focused on improving patient care. Having respected clinical leaders visibly champion the programme significantly increased engagement and adoption across maternity services.

3. Co-design creates better services

Working closely with the Maternity and Neonatal Voices Partnership (MNVP) helped ensure the service reflected what women and birthing people actually needed, rather than what professionals assumed they needed.

The co-design approach directly influenced the development of the Personalised Care and Support Plan, resource library, accessibility features, and overall patient experience.

4. Accessibility and inclusion must be designed in from the start

Digital innovation should improve access, not create new barriers.

Multilingual resources, maternity unit video tours, flexible communication methods, free mobile data SIM cards, and a digital-first but not digital-only approach were all considered from the outset. Building these elements into the programme from day one helped support equitable access and maximise adoption.

5. Start with one high-value pathway and build confidence

The phased implementation approach enabled the Trust to introduce the maternity resource library first, followed by live maternity chat and personalised care planning.

This allowed teams to build confidence, gather feedback, and embed new ways of working incrementally, contributing to strong adoption and engagement following go-live.

6. Existing NHS infrastructure can deliver meaningful transformation

The programme demonstrates that significant improvements in patient engagement do not always require new systems or large-scale technology investment.

By leveraging existing digital infrastructure and integrating services into a single patient engagement platform, the Trust was able to improve patient experience, simplify communication routes, support personalised care, and realise financial benefits through the decommissioning of legacy systems.

In addition to maternity services, patients at MSEFT utilise PKB to receive appointment details, clinical documents and radiology results. The platform is utilised in the neighbouring Essex Partnership University Trust as well as nearby ICS regions like North West London. With the NHS App as the front door for accessing PKB features, this ensures a joined up and consistent experience for patients across their wider healthcare journey.

Advice for Other Trusts

For organisations considering a similar approach, our strongest recommendation would be to start with the patient journey, involve clinical leaders and service users from the outset, and focus on solving real problems for women and families rather than implementing technology for its own sake.

Technology is the enabler; the transformation comes from redesigning how care is experienced.