A remote consultation service is being rolled out to over 140 GP practices across Hampshire and Isle of Wight.
Funded by the NHS and procured through open competition from the NHS Digital First Online Consultation Video Consultation framework, the iPLATO toolbar solution allows GP practices to offer advanced video consultation services to their patients.
iPLATO Remote Consultation includes features designed to make the experience simple and more familiar to the everyday user of NHS services. In addition to integration to the underlying GP system, the toolbar solution also offers seamless links to other modules on the myGP platform including Messaging and Triage and the myGP patient facing smartphone app.
The most recent version of Remote Consultation includes a ‘virtual waiting room’ for patients to join before your online consultation along useful options to blur or obscure your background, online text chat, file exchange and screen sharing and multiple participants so your GP can invite a colleague.
Scott Pashby, Head of Customer Success at iPLATO, said:
“We are looking forward to rolling out remote consultation across Hampshire and Isle of Wight. After the pandemic we all know how useful and effective remote consultation can be if used the right way in primary care. We also know that most practices have yet to find the ‘new normal’ and a healthy balance between virtual and physical appointments.
“Once we have installed and trained our users on the new system, we will show our commitment to supporting their digitalisation journey and share best practice and clever use cases from our nearly 3,000 GP practices through onsite visits, webinars, instruction videos and more. This commitment to continuous and gradual improvement is something that our GP practices appreciate and something that we take very seriously. We know that we are at the very beginning of digitising the patient experience of healthcare at this scale and we are thrilled to be part of it”.
Why is this being done when the Government has said that Doctors should be seeing patients should be seen face to face
Because whatever the Government says, there just aren’t enough GPs to do that.
And the problem is largely of the Government’s own making (which is why they are being so coy about it).
Funny how there were enough GPs to do that before the ‘pandemic’
For Sale: one NHS. Motive is profit first, care second.
Great marvellous but, how are the older generation going to use this service? Many of us don’t have a “smartphone” so how are we going to be better off?
Us older generation have to ‘put up and shut up’, especially when it comes to help with our poor mental health. I don’t have a smart phone. I’m becoming a recluse.
Totally agree what about over 75s how will they cope my mum is 88 she doesn’t even know how to turn a laptop on its disgusting what happened to supposedly going back to face to face appointments
If more of us “youngsters” who know how to use smartphones and make use of online services use this service there will be more actual appointment slots for those unwilling or incapable of using it.
I have to say, though, I’m 62 and have no issues using modern tech.
The internet has been around for over 25 years, and back then our more mature population were not so mature, but chose not to adopt and embrace it. Sadly as Billy Joel said, the world keeps turning. We used to have outside loos, and tin baths by the fire. Now we have double glazing, central heating and wet rooms. Whether we like it or not one has to embrace new things or sadly get left behind. The world has always evolved, but in this digital age, just a wee bit faster. The Libraries used to run basic courses for computing, and do these people not have family that could help. Youngsters love a bit of screen time, and it would bring the generations together. Both my mum & my fiancées are both in their late 70’s and are more than happy to surf the web, shop, book holidays & do E-consults with their GP. There is still certainly a place for face to face, but for so many things e consults work. It saves poorly people infecting others in the surgery for one & means gp’s can do more consultations in the same time. No need to trapse down for a repeat prescription, just order online, and your local pharmacy will deliver to your door. Also the more people that use online services, it will make more space for face to face for those that really need it.
Well, I would like you to come and teach my 87 year old mother who has alzheimers how to use a computer, smart phone or the Internet. Some people cannot “embrace” modern technology. Don’t they matter? Obviously not in your book.
Totally agree feel for the older generation what about poor sighted
Why has Covid allowed our GP services to suddenly sit back, take the money and allow any old company to see our personal details and offer third hand help to someone they don’t know, don’t care about and only want to get as many ‘consultations’ as possible to earn more money! How do we know that the person on the other side of our phones is actually a GP, or maybe a nurse/Nurse Practitioner or an office clerk? I have had one phone consult when I was told by someone I didn’t know “It’s Neuropathy” as if I knew what he was waffling about, before he put the phone down, and I swore not to have another! It seems that Google is your friend!
Absolutely disgusting. Average GP Salary `: just above £100,000 .. yes, 100 THOUSAND.. If they are only doing a half assed job by not seeing patients face to face, pay them half the salary !. I can see thousands of litigations arising from people being mis-diagnosed – or not diagnosed at all. The NHS is f****d .
This is the reason why so many GP are thinking “f*ck this for a game of soldiers” and either leaving the profession entirely or going private (where they can earn a lot more than £100k with far less stress and abuse, by the way).
At the other end, fewer and fewer newly qualified doctors are going into GP training. 5 year of additional training for a mediocre salary ( and it is mediocre for a highly trained professional, whatever you think ) and daily abuse.
I did have a doctor phone me back a while ago and he said he was sending a link so we could talk face to face via I think Zoom or similar, heard the link land in the phone which then promptly rejected it as dodgy maleware, game over waste of time!
What do they mean rolling it out? Its already here – since 2020 the ONLY way I can get any medical interaction with a doctor (or more likely a surgery nurse) is to do it online – literally CANNOT get a face to face appointment for love nor money. Disgusting.
There are not enough Doctors in the country. We all know that, the route cause is not training enough Doctors, but as it takes about 10 years to complete the training then Governments don’t want to invest in this when their party might not get the benefit.
But as we are where we are, how do we maintain the service? There are not enough Doctors on the island, but despite many attempts to recruit nobody want to come, so how do we solve that problem? You can’t force people to work in places they don’t want to –or are we a Stalinist state?
Yep, absolutely. It takes 10 years from starting medical school to fully qualified GP. This means that the supply of new GPs is actually going to decrease as we pass through those who started their training at the peak of Government austerity cuts.
Meanwhile we have more and more GPs walking out of the door due to their working conditions and abuse from patients, online and in the media.
It is technically possible to get Doctors on line, who work remotely, so why not use that as a “sticking plaster”, while the real problem is resolved.
The complaint that people over 75 don’t use smart phones is both rude and insulting. Just because they weren’t taught how to use them at school does not mean they cannot learn now.
What a truly fabulous idea, NOT! Stupid, cut doctors pay then if they cannot deliver a full service, what if some can’t use a computer, mobile phone etc, like the elderly. DOCTORS DO YOUR JOB AND STOP HIDING!
You know that GPs don’t have to work for the NHS, right?
It’s attitudes like yours that is driving them into private practice and overseas where they get paid more for less stress and less abuse (both in person and from Ill informed ranters like you).
Book in at Lynbottom Tip and throw yourself and your ridiculous comment in the nearest skip. Thank you.
Roll on death, at least a bit of peace and quiet. My family already know where the notes that I am keeping are, ready to be passed to the corenor in hard copy format. Having been duplicated of course.
I at first found the current eConsult service cumbersome and with several gaps in the help available on line but think the principle very good.
However, as others have commented, I have had problems with video links when attempting to connect with the link sent from the GP and on one occasion I could see and hear the Doctor clearly but her screen had frozen.
How does this new system work/compliment the current eConsult service or is it a replacement?
I really don’t get it, bar Alzheimer’s, why older people can’t learn simple basics, seems at 60 odd they trade in their brain cells and say that’s it for me (I’m 67 by the way and it infuriates me that I appear to be one of the few exceptions). The days of queuing up with your multiple paying in books at the post office, and making a day of it are gone; when there are ways to do things at a fraction of the cost, and much quicker why keep the good ol’ ways at exorbitant cost just for those who dig their heels in and simply refuse, like those that go limp at demonstrations when police try to move them on. Just asking to meet half way..
Well aren’t you the big hero. Many older people didn’t get a great education as they were concentrating on surviving a war. Computers and the Internet are totally alien to them and attitudes like yours don’t help them at all.
I didn’t get a great education either, and it’s nothing to do with education, it’s to do with will, desire to, a natural curiosity about new things as opposed to good old ways; it’s don’t want to, don’t have to, well maybe make an effort, as far as I know there are multiple classes for older people, if you don’t try, you don’t know, mostly it’s like riding a bike, but some will never know because apart from being intimidated there’s an element of yes I will say it laziness, there are 90 year old web designers, because they keep their brains active, and have a natural curiosity, and see life as a continuous learning experience. I get that a lot of consultations can’t be effectively done by webcam, but those that can can, and if a more thorough examination is needed then have a follow up in person. Instead GP’s basically get overwhelmed with petty ailments filling the waiting rooms and passing on their flu like symptoms to the person next to them.
Am I missing something?
How the hell does a GP actually examine you over a video call?
Listen to your chest? Look in your ear? Examine your eye pupil reactions? Check your heart? Look at your suspicious moles?
I could go on but what’s the point.
Will there be training for all of us on how to get past “our medically trained receptionists”!before even getting thru to this service?there medical training at our practice seems to be call 111 or take a paracetamol!,it’s shambolic,and as everybody has commented on here not going to be a lot of help for the 80 plus brigade,my own mother is 89 does know how to use ipad for staying in touch with her grandchildren etc,and order but a form yesterday from the diabetic clinic to tick boxes on!requesting information which she quite rightly said they already have on computers at her surgery!…I got her a face to face appointment with an elusive Gp!