Following a successful pilot with NHSE and South- East London, iPLATO’s latest NHS App development means over 6 million patients can now benefit from NHS App appointment reminders. Existing customers are likely to see SMS savings triple. This new development, combined with EPR integrated Keyword Replies, makes cancelling appointments easier, cheaper, and more accessible than SMS solutions.
Approximately 50% of all SMS costs are spent on appointment reminders. South-East London alone has sent over 4 million appointment reminders in the past 12 months. iPLATO’s integrations allow patients to cancel their appointment in the clinical system by simply replying with the word “Cancel” making this a beneficial tool for both patients and practices.
GP practices raised concerns about whether reminders would be read in the app. Other suppliers attempted to solve this by sending a fallback SMS if the NHS App message was unread after a few hours. iPLATO recognised this was not cost-efficient and could cause confusion for patients due to message duplication. iPLATO worked closely with NHS App team to address these concerns. In October 2023 an update was released to ensure only frequent users, with notifications enabled, received their message on the app.
iPLATO in partnership with NHSE and South-East London conducted a 6 week pilot across 5 practices to test the effectiveness of the update and the impact on DNAs. 2,000 appointment reminders were sent to patients through the NHS App and results showed:
iPLATO’s unique Keyword Reply integration with the NHS App allowed for 12.5 % of patients to easily cancel their appointment, without leaving the NHS App resulting in a seamless user experience.
The success of the pilot meant appointment reminders on the NHS App were widely welcomed across South-East London and they have seen the volume of NHS App messages triple. North-Central London ICB and Manchester ICB have recently implemented this change and are already experiencing cost savings.
Emily Ridley-Fink, Clinical Lead for South-East London ICB commented
“It was a valuable and informative experience working with iPLATO on this pilot. The work we did together not only made me feel more confident implementing and rolling out the new functionality across our ICB, but also showed that the key to successful innovation is collaborative partnerships with our suppliers.”