EMIS goes national with digital TV appointment booking

Tags: Broadband Community EMIS GP repeat prescriptions South

20 Jul 2007

Primary care IT supplier EMIS has extended its online appointment booking service so that patients can now book GP surgery appointments via digital television or by using their mobile phone.

EMIS has announced that it is extending the digital television service to cover all practices across the country using its EMIS Access module after successful pilots in South Yorkshire, Stoke, Reading and Wrexham.

The service is run by EMIS in conjunction with DigiTV, a not-for-profit organisation owned and managed by Kirklees Council on behalf of local government. Patients can access the system via the Looking Local portal on DigiTV after requesting a password from their practice. In future patients will also be able to use the service to order repeat prescriptions and access health information.

Sean Riddell, managing director of EMIS, said the expansion of the DigiTV service would significantly increase the availability of EMIS’s appointment booking service.

He added: “This is a significant milestone for GPs, practice staff and patients. The technology is now in place to offer this free service to a far bigger audience using a range of technical platforms. We will be actively encouraging practices to switch on EMIS Access and start to realise the benefits."

Looking Local is available on the interactive menus on Sky, cable and Freeview boxes with a modem or broadband connection. On WAP enabled mobile phones access to Looking Local is charged at varying rates depending on the service provider.

Steve Langrick, Kirklees Interactive Services Manager, said the addition of doctors’ appointments to looking Local was helping to create a nationally relevant and community focused portal on digital, interactive TV and mobile.

He added: “Doctors’ appointments are cited by many across government as a key e-Government service so we are pleased to now be able to offer it to patients across the country.”

To view a version of DigiTV/mobile doctors' appointments via your PC visit the following site.

Links

Demo

DigiTV

Reader's Comments

Another good example of grass roots innovation

glen.griffiths@interactivhealth.co.uk

21 Jul 07 20:07

BTW - The correct hyperlink to accss the demo is: http://www.digitv.gov.uk/digitv/cds/Birmingham/Netgem/screen?id=53820

I look forward to seeing how the use of this service expands over the coming months and years. One of the challenges down the line will be to ensure that remote booking of appointments by patients either on-line, mobile (WAP) or via digitv doesn't disadvantage those who are not 'digitally connected' therefore an approach of rationing appointments may be neccesary. It would be interesting to understand if that aspect was researched as part of the pilot study.

I do hope tht vendors of other Practice Systems follow this approach to ensure that a uniform approach to remote booking is adopted. If on-line services are regarded as non-proprietary (at least at the point of access) then as patients move between practices the user experience can remain the same (essential if this innovation is to diffuse nationally) irrespective of which system the practice employs.

Glen Griffiths CEO InteractivHealth plc

Brilliant!

23 Jul 07 18:07

What a simple, ingenious and effective use of IT to improve patient care in General Practice! Can anyone imagine why it wasn't CfH who thought of it?