This story was first published in digitalhealth.net
E-Referral Service goes live on Monday
NHS England and the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) have been working for the past two years on replacing Choose and Book, which is currently available at nine in ten healthcare providers and is used to refer around 40,000 patients a day. Feedback from 2,500 stakeholders, including patients and NHS professionals, was analysed to ensure the new system can suit user needs.
There are several potential developments that may feature later in the year, including the ability to link appointments in a care pathway so that all take place in a pre-determined order and enabling patients to book follow-up appointments electronically. There is also the possibility of developing different ways to access the service, including smartphone apps, e-mails and text reminders.
The new Service was originally meant to go live in November 2014 but was delayed until spring 2015 due to the need for “significant test, assurance and defect resolution activity” to be completed. The transition will begin on the evening of Friday 12 June and continue over the weekend, with new the service available from the morning of Monday 15 June.
Stephen Miller, medical director for the e-Referral Service project, said “The feedback we’ve had from users who have done assurance testing is that it looks and feels at least as good, if not better, than Choose and Book,”
Ben Gildersleve, programme director for the project, add that the technical aspects of the e-Referral Service are “completely brand new” and added that the new system has“been built in a way that moving forward, on a much more rapid basis, we can update the service. So rather than doing big releases every six months, we can do much smaller releases every few weeks.”
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