NHS Mental Health Trust improves service with Patient Care Messaging

NELMHT provides NHS mental health services in the London Boroughs of Barking and Dagenham, Havering, Redbridge and Waltham Forest (a population of nearly one million) and has been partnering with IT firm iPLATOin a pilot scheme using its Patient Care Messaging technology since last year.

iPLATO's technology offers an effective solution to the costly problem of missed appointments by sending automatic appointment alerts via SMS (text messaging) to patients from the clinic's administration system. This is a positive move to decrease the number of missed appointments and aims to save time and money and improve productivity for the Trust. iPLATO's scheme running with NELMHT is one of three partnerships that it currently has with NHS Trusts in London.

The eEurope Awards is an annual award project funded by the European Commission formed part of the eHealth Conference. It brings together ministers and senior representatives of governmental bodies and healthcare organisations from across Europe to share new concepts and ideas in the area of electronic service provision and highlight best practise. The awards recognise innovation initiatives in the areas of eGovernment and eHealth across Europe and aim to highlight those initiatives which best increase efficiency and performance of public services and that improve the quality and accessibility of those services.

This year the eHealth Awards received more than 100 submissions, all of which were judged by an evaluation committee. The best applications were invited to exhibit their project at the High Level Conference in Cork (IRL) on 5th and 6th May, which NELMHT and iPLATO attended and also demonstrated a working model of their Patient Care Messaging technology.

Peter Manser, Associate Director of Informatics at NELMHT: "We entered the eHealth Awards and were short listed by virtue of iPLATO's technology, its Patient Care Messaging is a very good application of ubiquitous technology.

"We have tried a number of other ways of reducing our DNA (did not attend) rates in the past including letters and telephone calls but with the Patient Care Messaging we hope to reach our patients directly without using valuable staff hours to do so. It is important that we not only reduce the number of missed appointments but that we also have a means of reaching disengaged patients before they get into a crisis."

Arjen Soetekouw, Commercial Director of iPLATO said: We are very pleased to be working with the North East London Mental Health Trust and proud that our Patient Care Messaging scheme was chosen as one of the finalists for the eEurope Awards. The cost of missed appointments in the healthcare sector is a very real issue and we hope that our technology can help tackle this problem."

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