Kings College Hospital


Email Module To GP's
Kings College Hospital currently use ViewPoint throughout their Early Pregnancy Unit and Harris Birthright Centre to document and record the images and biometry of all of their Obstetric and Early Pregnancy Scans as well as Colposcopy examinations.

GP Letters Challenge
The challenge had been that although Kings College Hospital send all GP letters for patients within the Lambeth and Southwark district via email using the EPR system, letters previously generated via the ViewPoint software were not included in the automatic email send process and were manually sent via post. This was both time consuming and frustrating for the King’s Staff and was not cost effective. As such after initial project discussions, Kings College commissioned HNC to develop a custom SMTP Email Module using their Talk2 architecture to allow Viewpoint Letters from the Early Pregnancy Unit via the In-house Notifications service (used to send Trust Emails through the national NHS Mail Service) to the GP.

PDF Export
HealthNetConnections Ltd developed a custom email module which intercepts the existing PDF Export messages and translates them into a standard email message with the GP Letter attached. Using the email address details from within the patient record on viewpoint all GP letters are now sent via the NHSMail infrastructure. The email body was also built to contain custom data tags which will enable the DocMan systems at the GP Clinic to automatically read and store the Letters against the Patient Record.

HealthNetConnections Ltd also developed custom logic to ensure that the letter is only sent to a list of pre designated email suffixes, if the GP email address on the record does not match one of several safe addresses then an alert is sent to a super user within the Trust therefore ensuring Patient Confidentiality and Data Security.

Benefits
So far the benefits that have been seen include:

  • Reduction in the amount of Paper used during the working day
  • Reduction in postage costs for the Trust
  • Reduction in time taken by Staff to send the Letters
  • Improved Correspondence Time with the GP’s
  • Clear audit trail of all electronic letters sent to our GP’s