Giving patients freedom of choice
In 2003 Atos Origin was contracted to provide a national electronic booking service (EBS) as part of the NHS Programme for IT (NPfIT).
Choose and Book is a national service that, for the first time, combines electronic booking and a choice of place, date and time for first outpatient appointments. It is designed to transform the way patients can access NHS resources and give them more choice as to where and how the NHS will look after their needs.
The current contract, scheduled to run until June 2008, includes provision for an infrastructure hosting, infrastructure support and application support scheduling service. The EBS gives NHS Authorities the ability to book patients into clinics, hospitals and for other episodes of care via one centralised service. It enables the NHS to review and change booked appointments, as well as allowing healthcare professionals to review patient referral information.
Streamlining administration
GPs, consultants and other healthcare professionals can access the EBS system to make, review and amend bookings as required – these users are situated on the N3 network.
Other users include the BMS (Booking Management System) helpdesk that will provide a service to the NHS Authority and general public for booking or amending appointments.
Ultimately, the final group of users that will have access to the EBS system will be the general public, who will be able to make bookings via the internet following a visit to a healthcare professional.
Through electronic booking, GP surgeries can access hospital systems and book patients directly into hospital appointments. If patients prefer not to make an appointment immediately, they can telephone the call centre at a later date to find out about availability and make an appointment – they will only be able to do this once they have been referred by their GP. Patients will also be able to make or change appointments via the internet. See also www.chooseandbook.nhs.uk
Services and capabilities
• 24/7 technical support
• Incident change and problem management
• Server and storage hosting and management
• Disaster recovery
• Application management and support
• Software development
• Managed workplace services, workplace management and support
• Consultancy and professional services.