Digital channels for citizen guidance and triage

Emergency Department Digital Integration

We have delivered a tactical Emergency Department Digital Integrator web service (EDDI) which enables 111 Online and 111 Telephony services to book patients into Emergency Departments (EDs) and to provide EDs with a view of expected patient flow. This will help reduce crowding in waiting rooms, enable better capacity management of EDs, and facilitate sharing of clinical information between 111 providers and EDs.

The EDDI Release 1 (1 November 2020) was rapidly developed with only 14 weeks from initial concept to deployment and provides basic appointment booking functionality. Subsequent releases on 16 and 30 November allowed EDs to manage capacity and view 111 referral information. The final release is planned for 16 December 2020 and will provide management reporting capability.

All 111 providers/clinical assessment services (bar one) have successfully integrated with EDDI, providing coverage for 99% of the country.

As of 1 December 2020, 84% of the 141 EDs that have opted to use EDDI had deployed the solution. Deployment to the remaining sites is planned by 31 January 2021. Initial feedback has been strongly positive.

The Urgent and Emergency Care - Directory of Service (UEC DOS) has been configured to support the deployment of EDDI in line with the wider 111 First business change programme. Additional referral codes have been added to UEC DOS to support areas using both EDDI and local solutions.

The strategic 'system to system' solution is being progressed in parallel and allows ED software suppliers to integrate directly to the 111 service via CareConnect APIs. Ten EDs and urgent treatment centres using EMIS Symphony, Cleo Systems or Wasp Software have successfully gone live in November 2020.

ED streaming

NHS Digital has been commissioned to provide a front door streaming product for ED that allows walk-in patients who have not been triaged through a 111 service to be managed in a similar way on arrival via a self-service triage on consoles in EDs. Patients will be directed to the most appropriate care setting based on the self-service triage which may not be the ED).

The Beta version of the product has been built and will be piloted in 5 EDs from December 2020. 

Injuries Light Module

We have completed Beta testing for the injuries light module that allows NHS 111 Health Advisors to refer injury calls to less specialised Service Advisors. This product increases capacity in 111 services by enabling Service Advisors to manage injury calls (approximately 10% of 111 call volumes).

Pathways Clinical Consultation Support (PaCCS)

We have developed the PaCCS product to provide an aide memoir for clinicians performing remote clinical consultations. PaCCS provides NHS Pathways content in a consultation format (rather than a question and answer format) and supports ambulance dispatch, DoS service searching and home care advice.  NHS Pathways team are working with host system suppliers and a range of urgent and emergency providers to start beta testing.

Improving data quality in the Personal Demographics Service (PDS)

We have conducted pilots in Leeds CCG (94 GP practices) and Nottinghamshire (127 GP practices) to test acceptability and effectiveness of direct updates to the Personal Demographics Service (PDS) by patients using NHS Login. The Personal Demographics Service (PDS) is the national electronic database of NHS patient details and NHS Login enables patients to securely access digital health services via a single login.

Patients participating in the pilot were asked to check and update their contact information if it differed from the data held on PDS. Practice staff were then asked to accept the changes to PDS the next time they accessed the patient’s record on their clinical system.

Between 12 October 2020 and 8 December 2020, 136k users were authenticated via NHS Login and, of these, 18k (12%) were asked to update the contact details held on the NHS record and 10k of these patients provided the missing information. Approval has now been provided for a national roll-out of this capability in early 2021.