Patients of GP practices in North Central London including Enfield, Barnet, Haringey, Camden and Islington will soon start receiving appointment reminders and health information via text message. Already in use by a large number of practices in the area this service aims to improve patient access to GP services, reduce unnecessary visits to A&E as well as informing patients about important NHS services such as cancer screening and seasonal flu immunisation.
North Central London NHS Cluster has committed to fund participating surgeries across the Boroughs to use iPLATO Patient Care Messaging for the next three years. With 91% of the UK adult population owning a mobile phone (77% in the 65-74 age group) surgeries can reach a significant number of their patients through this service. Text messages are free to receive for the patient. If they have a smartphone such as iPhone, Blackberry or Android patients will also be able to access information about their local health services via their mobile phone.
Dr. Janet High GP at the Park Lodge Medical Centre, one of the current existing practice said, "Mobile phones are used by most of our patients and so text messaging is an effective way to communicate with them. This service has the potential to significantly increase the number of patients attending clinics as well as saving on surgery administration costs."
Patients who choose to respond to text reminders or access the smartphone service will be charged standard operator rates depending on their individual contract. Patients can opt out of the service at any time by contacting their surgery.
To benefit from these services patients are encouraged to hand in their mobile phone number to their practice. If patients have already their mobile phone number recorded with their GP they will receive a text message to let them know that the service is running as part of service launch.
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About iPLATO
iPLATO Healthcare is British innovation company dedicated to mobile health since 2006.
iPLATO's evidence based mobile health solutions have proven to improve patient access to healthcare, to enable powerful health promotion targeted at people at risk and to support people with long term conditions.
Serving millions of patients and thousands of healthcare professionals every day iPLATO has emerged as the leader in mobile health. Across this network the company is running campaigns to promote smoking cessation, weight loss, childhood immunisation and pandemic awareness as well as mobile disease management services for people with diabetes, hypertension, epilepsy and HIV.
iPLATO Healthcare's mission is to, in partnership with healthcare professionals and provider organisations, support patients in achieving longer, healthier lives.