Mobile health specialist, iPLATO, announced today that it has rolled out Patient Care Messaging extensively across 10 Primary Care Trusts in the first quarter of 2008. The roll-outs will allow an additional 2 million people across England to benefit from improved access and mobile health promotion from their GPs. Confirming the national appeal of the platform the majority of the PCTs to launch iPLATO Patient Care Messaging are located outside of London.
Underlining an evolution in market perception, only half of these launches primarily targeted DNA rate reduction - with the remaining PCTs adopting the platform for the support of Public Health areas such as Smoking Cessation, Obesity, Screening and Immunisation.
"Our Primary Care Trust has funded iPLATO Patient Care Messaging as a strategic capability for 42 surgeries, to enable broad engagement with our population", says Lesley Mountford, Director of Public Health at City and Hackney PCT. "We are looking at text appointment reminders as a means to establish a 'mobile relationship' with patients, but we emphasise the opportunity to run mobile health promotion campaigns. This year we plan to use the texting in breast screening and smoking cessation. We are really pleased that the vast majority of the surgeries chose to take part. As a result more than 90% of our population will now benefit from mobile services."
A crucial aspect to fuel this growth has been iPLATOs evidence based offerings, which have allowed its NHS partners to not only identify and engage with at risk patients through mobile health promotion, but also to confirm the impact of these campaigns as well. The company has appointed Dr Josip Car as Chief Medical Officer to accelerate the development of the company's service offering, clearly emphasising its commitment to deliver evidence and outcomes.
"I am delighted to join a young and dynamic team", says Dr Josip Car, General Practitioner and Director of eHealth at Imperial College. "With a rapidly growing patient base and platform integrated to the current healthcare delivery system, I feel that there is a magnificent opportunity to expand the offering and really improve the health of patients and populations. The three main areas of offerings we are looking at are access improvement / practice efficiency, health promotion and support to patients with long term conditions. The mobile channel has a huge role to play in all three areas."
Related news articles:
- iPLATO's Profile
About iPLATO
iPLATO is a privately owned limited company founded in London in the autumn of 1999. In 2003, iPLATO was awarded a SMART Feasibility Grant by the Department of Trade & Industry to study the feasibility for national implementation of a system to remind outpatients about scheduled appointments using text messaging technology. Since completing the study, the company has invested substantial resources towards overcoming the barriers to entry of the healthcare market and now provides successful healthcare solutions to NHS organisations throughout the United Kingdom - building a promising business around its flagship service 'Patient Care Messaging'.
The European Venture Contest, organised by the European Commission, recognised iPLATO as one of the top ten early stage technology ventures ready to "reshape their industry and to conquer the global market" and featured on the Red Herring Europe Top 200 of companies to watch in 2006. iPLATO began 2008 with extensive (PCT funded) roll out of Patient Care Messaging to GP surgeries across 10 Primary Care Trusts.
For more information, visit www.iplato.net.