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Digital solutions
Text messages or emails from NHS-NoReply and PatientsKnowBest
You may have received a text message or email from Chelwest, NHS-NoReply, PatientsKnowBest or from +44 7860 039092 about one of the services below. These are legitimate communications.
We encourage you to sign up to these secure digital solutions so we can continue to provide the best possible care.
Patients may receive a message with a link to confirm if they would still like to go ahead with their surgical procedure. This allows us to understand and book your procedures more efficiently.
Please note: If you receive both email and text message communications from us, you will receive only email communications from mid-October 2022. You can change your communications preferences at any time via DrDoctor.
Digital letters explained
Improving your care with digital systems
New technology is helping us to deliver safe, high-quality and remote clinical care for our patients.
Our digital systems are designed to improve how we connect and communicate with patients to ensure we provide excellent care when we are unable to meet in person. They also enable you to take control of your own healthcare—including booking appointments, accessing your electronic health record, and remotely monitoring and reporting your symptoms.
We’re bringing our teams to you with video consultations from the comfort of your home or workplace. We’re listening to you about what works for you.
Patient communication tablets
Our Trust, working together with our charity CW+, has tablets available to support patients, fully equipped with apps and internet access—the devices are intended as communications and engagement tools for patients. Please ask a member of staff for more details.
Integrating digital solutions
We are increasing the use of digital technologies to ensure we provide the best possible care and experience both in our hospitals and in the community. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are inviting patients by text message or email to access the services below. This ensures that we can continue to deliver the best possible care.
Care Coordination Solution
The North West London acute trusts are currently deploying the Care Coordination Solution (CCS). This is part of the national Improving Elective Care Coordination for Patients programme so that the trusts can better plan, schedule and manage patients through their pathways. This is being achieved by empowering clinical and non-clinical staff to re-design systems and processes and integrate data from several different systems providing a single user interface to manage patients' journey.
CCS leverages data from key systems by creating a truly single point of access to support managing the patient pathway. This allows the Trust to create a ‘single version of the truth’ in one system for clinicians, operational management and administrative staff to use live data and near real time synchronisation with the multiple clinical systems so that we can treat patients in the right order faster.
Care Information Exchange (CIE)
The CIE is a web application provided by PatientsKnowBest (PKB) that gives patients access to their health (medical) records, which can be updated by the patient and shared with different medical teams and carers to help speed up and improve treatment.
Your information is held in the secure NHS network. It will only be used by healthcare professionals for your direct care. You can choose to share your care record with your family, carers, GP and other health professionals if you wish.
The Trust and DrDoctor work together closely to benefit our patients. To use the benefits of DrDoctor you will need to log in with your surname, postcode and date of birth.
Patients receive a text message with a link to their hospital letter, which means they can see their letter quicker, while saving the NHS money and helping the environment—our patients love this service, with only about 4% still choosing to receive paper letters
Patients receive text reminders about their upcoming outpatient appointments meaning they never forget when to come to hospital
We are currently making it possible for patients to reschedule their appointment via their mobile phone—no need to call the hospital, you can communicate with us conveniently through your mobile phone
Patients with long term conditions can book themselves directly into a specialist appointments to reduce the number of patients seeking treatment in A&E—this means our A&E department can focus on the most urgent patients and at the same time ensures that our patients receive better, more appropriate care if they experience a flare-up of their symptoms
Isla
Isla is an online platform that makes it easy for patients to seamlessly respond to questionnaires, share photographs and videos so that clinicians can gain information, allowing better and quicker decisions. The service is designed to be easy to use and patients will not need to create an account. Patients can submit questionnaires, photographs and videos securely to their clinicians using their mobile phone or tablet with just a few clicks, often avoiding the need to attend hospital for a face-to-face appointment.
At the Trust this service is currently being used in:
Dermatology: Our clinicians need to understand how a patients' condition is changing over time and Isla makes this possible by allowing patients to seamlessly share photographs and videos with clinicians.
Digital Health Questionnaires (DHQ): Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust sends text messages to all patients awaiting surgical procedures, operations and investigations at our hospitals. The text message contains a link to a survey which will first ask if you still need your surgical procedure, operation or investigations.
PIFU improves the convenience and availability of your care by giving you direct access to your care team, allowing you to request an appointment when you need one for 6 to 12 months after your last appointment. This service is delivered in partnership with digital health company DrDoctor.
Regular appointments scheduled by the hospital are not always appropriate as they often occur months apart when you're feeling well and don't need to be seen, rather than specifically when needed. Regular follow-up appointments that require no change in treatment take up your time unnecessarily. Being discharged from a hospital clinic can be concerning but this service aims to support you in managing your health and giving you direct access back to your specialist care team for a year afterwards.
This service allows us to:
Give you more choice over your time, care and experience
Ensure you have access to your care team if your condition flares up
Ensure you are only coming to hospital when you really need to
Limit the stress of attending hospital (taking time off work, travelling and waiting)
DBm-Health
The Trust and Sensyne Health are working on their innovative DBm-Health app that enables patients to manage their diabetes more effectively from home.
DBm-Health has been co-designed by diabetes clinicians at the Trust and Sensyne Health to enable patients to remotely monitor blood glucose levels while allowing clinicians to see their results, stay in regular contact with them and reduce the need to go into the hospital.
DBm-Health is a secure patient-clinician communication system comprising a smartphone app that allows patients with diabetes or at a risk of diabetes, to record their blood glucose levels and communicate these to their care team.
In addition, the app shows you messages from your healthcare team and, if you have questions, you can request a callback from them through the app. DBm-Health can help to limit hospital visits by providing blood glucose readings and other patient information which can be viewed remotely by clinicians.
Using the app, you can record more data with the reading:
What time of day the reading was for (eg before breakfast or after lunch)
What medications you took
Any comments that you think will be helpful to your health care team
You can enter blood glucose levels in two ways:
By connecting to a blood glucose meter that you have set up with the app
By entering a value manually
The app sends all this information to your care team who will look at the data and contact you if they need to. The app also includes self-help guides and you can review a record of your blood glucose readings in diary and graph format helping you to manage your blood glucose levels.
Concentric
Concentric is a digital consent solution that supports patient decision making. Information can be shared between clinicians and patients securely to support before and after surgery.
The vast majority of patients access their information digitally, regardless of their age, and many want to make sure they have a safe record of that information to return to. A key theme in our patient feedback is that having all their information in one place, with links to further resources is really appreciated, both before and after treatment. Concentric allows us to easily adapt and personalise consent, improving the patient experience of decision making and reducing errors in the process.
Chelsea and Westminster Trust is proud to have participated in the second wave of the NHS England Test Beds programme in 2019/20. This ambitious programme brought together innovators, industry and the NHS to tackle some of the biggest challenges facing the NHS. The Trust’s project, in partnership with Imperial Collage Healthcare Partners, was ‘Developing a Schedule for Unscheduled Care’ where we combined digital applications to provide patients with long term conditions better access to their clinical information and urgent care intervention options.
