Leading healthtech providers launch new offering to transform end-to-end remote patient care

[LONDON, 17 August 2020] An enhanced remote consultation service for GP surgeries has been launched by three of the UK’s leading providers of healthcare technology.

eConsult Health, Q doctor and Cognitant have collaborated on an online toolbar which enables GP practices to have quick and easy access to the three providers’ platforms. This prioritises patient needs and directs them to the best starting point in the healthcare system, first time.

It allows GPs and practice staff to manage the entire patient journey from one screen and provide fully integrated triage, remote consultation and patient information, minimising the number of steps traditionally taken after a patient completes an online consultation. 

The toolbar provides greater dexterity for remote-working GPs and practices through the utilisation of the new optional virtual smart card/virtual PC system via Q doctor. Clinicians are also able to share Cognitant’s digital patient information via email rather than through traditional printed leaflets.

Installed in a single, hassle-free download, the toolbar is free of charge to any GP practice currently using eConsult, which constitutes over 40 per cent of all NHS practices. The toolbar includes an auto-update functionality to ensure GPs have the latest version as features evolve.

eConsult’s ‘triage-first’ approach removes barriers to care and means that patients can access the right support more quickly.

After completing an online questionnaire, patients are then assessed by an appropriate healthcare professional. Following this, the most effective course of treatment is communicated back to the patient remotely, for example using Q doctor’s video consultation software or eConsult’s built-in email functionality, both of which can be initiated from the new toolbar.

As part of this communication, GPs, Nurses and other primary care professionals can provide their patients with supporting information sourced from Healthinote. This helps to extend the consultation and empowers patients to better manage their health. Using these methods to close the consultation remotely can save patients a trip into the practice and leaves them with easy to consume information that they can access remotely in their own time.

With more than 11 years of collective experience working in partnership with the NHS, all three companies understand the complexities of the organisations and systems they support.

Dr Murray Ellender, CEO of eConsult and practising NHS GP, said:

“We have been building up to a patient journey which delivers an excellent consultation experience whilst optimising GP time and resources for several years, having successfully delivered over four million online consultations. COVID-19 has shown this is the way forward.

“Remote triage is essential to provide the right care first time and to eliminate any unnecessary steps. Our partnership with Q doctor will make it even easier and more streamlined for both patients and doctors to consult remotely at a time when face to face appointments can be risky.

“With increased virtual consultations, it is even more necessary to ensure that we extend the online consultation with clear, engaging and accessible patient information that can be consumed by the patient in their own time. With the integration of Cognitant’s Healthinote platform, primary care clinicians will be able to seamlessly select and share trusted information with their patients.

“Our solution has triaged millions of patients and ensures that possible COVID-19 carriers stay away from GP practices, enabling the treatment of non-COVID-19 patients to continue safely. This has fundamentally changed the way patients interact with GP services and is fast becoming the norm.

“With between 70 and 95 per cent of patient issues now being resolved remotely, the COVID-19 pandemic has seen unprecedented adoption of new technologies to help manage the crisis through temporary and fast-tracked approval of healthtech solutions to support and improve direct care.^[1] We are confident that, by integrating the expertise of Q doctor and Cognitant into the eConsult service, patients and clinicians alike will benefit from virtual consultations which truly complement and add value to the traditional model.”

Dr Chris Whittle, Founder of Q doctor said:

“With long-established secure digital offerings that pre-existed COVID-19 easing of regulations, Q doctor and eConsult both adhere to best practice when it comes to data security and clinical governance. Both companies did the hard work around security and regulation before the pandemic, but now have complementary offerings that are really synergistic for practices. In our case, insights dashboards and virtual PCs (clinicians can use their own devices securely) we were already working on are now more relevant than ever in a partnership like this.”

Dr Tim Ringrose, CEO of Cognitant said:

“I am delighted to partner with eConsult in enabling clinicians in over 3,000 UK GP practices to create information prescriptions via Healthinote. Our mission is to empower patients with accessible, memorable and impactful health information, helping people to better manage their health. We are happy that our patient information will help to extend eConsult consultations with engaging and accessible information about treatment and diagnosis that can be consumed by the patient at their leisure.”