By Tobias Alpsten, CEO and Founder of iPLATO
General practice is the cornerstone of the NHS, tasked with managing the growing number of patients and the complexity of their needs. At iPLATO, we are deeply involved in this evolution by adopting and implementing the principles of modern general practice as set out in NHS England’s delivery plan. This plan is essential for aligning resources with needs, enhancing patient experiences, and improving working conditions for staff in general practice. We do this through two strategic offerings:
The iPLATO Platform:
The iPLATO Platform allows primary care providers to seamlessly communicate with patients. The platform consists of a unique combination of five products that, when working together, offer a practice or PCN complete control and flexibility over patient engagement.
Connect, Toolbar, Triage, Selfbook and FFT serve as the all-in-one toolkit for digital patient communication needs and is all your practice needs to deliver modern general practice.
We’ve already seen the positive results of our digital solutions, for example iPLATO practice Little Harwood Health Centre, in Blackburn, has drastically improved their patient engagement and efficient handling of 1,700 triage requests, with an average resolution time of 27 hours. And they’re not the only practice that’s reaping the benefits of our digital tools. Over the last 18 months, Darwen Healthcare’s patient list has grown from 12,200 to 14,200 resulting in an increase in revenue. They use iPLATO to transform the way they handle patient requests. By promoting iPLATO Triage they’ve reduced phone calls by nearly 9% and increased their triage usage by 112% compared to last year.
Hub+ (managed pathways)
Our managed pathways service means that we do the work for you, easing practice’s workload. It can be applied across a number of different areas including cancer, respiratory and cardiovascular diseases.
Take for example, our asthma pathway which automatically invites patients, meaning no additional administration for the practice. It aligns invitations to the capacity in the PCN and automatically updates the patient’s record. In one initiative, across six months, we targeted 1,066 asthma patients within the PCN, introducing a digital Asthma Control Test (ACT) questionnaire, risk-profiling and alternative appointment capacity arrangements. The results?
- 42% of targeted patients completed the digital-ACT
- Only an 8% drop-off during the questionnaire
- 19% uptake within a non-responder cohort, who previously were unengaged
The programme also enabled the PCN to improve their QOF performance from the previous year and within a shorter timeframe, reduced an appointment time reduction by 25% for low-risk patients and enabled stratification to see those at higher-risk, first.
Redefining the future of modern general practice
Our merger with eConsult has only strengthened our position to deliver modern general practice across England. Combining best-in-class technologies, iPLATO’s patient communication platform and eConsult’s digital triage platform are now beneficiaries of Huma’s global AI and cloud expertise, through Huma Workspace.
This means we are offering the iPLATO Toolbar to all GP practices in England. This free offer includes messaging.
And in the short term, eConsult and iPLATO England users get more for no additional cost too:
- eConsult users can register for iPLATO Selfbook, in addition to Toolbar.
- iPLATO users can access eConsult’s structured Online Consultation technology (until 31st March 2025).
eConsult CEO and co-founder, Dr Murray Ellender explains what’s next,
“I’m focused on how we can do more collectively to help both patients and clinicians. We have strong roots in both primary and secondary care – we understand what the market needs to fix its crippling demand challenges. This is an exciting opportunity for both our users and our employees to accelerate the shift to digital first healthcare”
Both companies are dedicated to modernising general practice across the NHS through strategic innovation and support. Watch this space…
