Sustainable health and care records
Patients Know Best (PKB) is a Net-Zero provider as of 2021, years ahead of the national targets set by NHS England.
We’re committed to developing pioneering health and care technology that is sustainable for generations to come. Alongside our commitment to our own footprint, PKB continues to support its userbase to reduce the environmental impact associated with the delivery of care for patients, professionals and health economies.
We’re well on our way to supporting the NHS to achieve the ambition ‘for a greener NHS’ with net carbon zero. As a B-Corp Social Enterprise we are continuing to work hard to reduce our own carbon footprint and improve our platform to support healthcare.
Our platform enables health and care providers to deliver a secure, digital solution to their patients for better communication and self management, all while reducing carbon emissions and providing a more sustainable service. Starting with the immediate impact from reducing the number of printed letters and reducing appointments, to our broader aim of providing patients with the tools and data to self manage and self care. These efforts ultimately lead to a decreased need for hospital admission or readmission resulting in the biggest impact on the NHS.
Making paper obselete
PKB allows patients to store digital versions of their health record and to receive and exchange data with health and care providers. This substitutes the use of paper and printing, helping to make paper-based health records obsolete.
PKB provides the facility to allow patients to receive digital correspondence from their healthcare providers making it more efficient, quicker, safer and cheaper, reducing the amount of paper required and the associated printing/posting costs. The platform also enables healthcare teams to provide a lot more of their paper resources digitally such as leaflets and documents. This means the patient always has them to hand wherever they are and knows they are the most up to date version.
As of the end of 2023, PKB has supported over 2.5 million letters being sent digitally, rather than physically, avoiding 342tCO2e.
Reduce face-to-face consultations
At Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust they identified an opportunity to enhance efficiency by implementing a digital pathway for data collection, which would enable certain assessments to be conducted over the phone or eliminated altogether. Prior to the implementation of the new digital pathway, the trust would arrange a face to face appointment with every patient going through this pathway. Through PKB, the trust is able to analyse these questionnaire responses, enabling the service to avoid 163 face to face appointments as patients didn’t need to be seen ahead of their procedure and swap 133 face to face appointments to phone calls (avoiding a total of 296 face to face appointments taking place). Every avoided outpatient appointment has the ability to avoid 6.94kgCO2e. More details can be found here.
As a result this pre-assessment pathway saved 2.1tCO2e over an eight month period. During this same time period, the trust avoided sending 183,258 physical letters across their entire patient population, avoiding 25.1tCO2e.
Facilitate self-care
Enabling patients to self manage their conditions helps to support Patient-Initiated Follow-Up (PIFU) pathways that result in reduced or avoided patient travel. PKB allows a patient to share information about their condition with their health and care teams anytime, anywhere. Bedfordshire Hospital’s IBD service avoids approximately 1,100 outpatient appointments per year through the use of PKB to support patient-initiated follow ups. Per year the trust is avoiding 7.6tCO2e. Read the full case study here.
A team at Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust is transforming post-operative follow-up care by utilising PKB’s messaging service to send personalised video messages to patients. Traditionally about 50% of patients require clinical assessment around 4-6 weeks after surgery. The remaining cohort, however, are seen for reassurance. The pilot assessment indicated that using the video model meant only about 15% of this reassurance cohort would still need a follow-up appointment versus 75% using the legacy approach. Read the full case study here.
Medical data accessible to self manage
"Patients being enabled to see their own results empowers them to manage their own condition. It also allows us to design remote management pathways meaning that patients will no longer need to come to the hospital regularly. This is better for the patients and better for the NHS; having patients who have already seen problem-results mean they are prepared for the discussion we need to have."
Sustainability powered by a clear social purpose
To recognise our ambitions as an innovative social enterprise that empowers patients and joins up healthcare information, we became a Certified B Corporation in September 2015. PKB is featured in the list of businesses that earned scores in the top 10% of more than 2,500 Certified B Corporations globally on the B Impact Assessment. The assessment measures a company’s positive impact on its workers, community, customers and the environment.
B Corp allows us to demonstrate and achieve our social mission across the world.