Universal Care Plan integrated into the NHS App, making patient access easier 

The Universal Care Plan, London's shared care planning solution, has integrated with the NHS App, a digital gateway serving over 30 million patients across the National Health Service. This integration represents a new step towards patient-centred healthcare, taking accessibility and active patient participation into a new era. 

The NHS App is considered a digital front door for patients across the NHS. It is a digital service for patients to access GP information, book appointments, view vaccination information, and more. Now, it also seamlessly connects with the Universal Care Plan. 

Better, who supplies the UCP care planning solution, completed two sets of integrations - NHS login and NHS App, ensuring patient authenticated access to their care plans. This signifies a bridge between the NHS App and UCP's patient-oriented interface, designed according to the NHS style guidelines, accessibility standards, and patient-centric language.

Patients can view their updated care plans in the app 

Currently, there are approximately 58,000 care plans within the London area that can link to the NHS App. Patients, upon NHS App access, can instantly view their updated care plans, rendering real-time information readily available. The integration is being piloted with 20 GP practices with high usage of the UCP and will then be rolled out to London's 1,400 GP practices, where access to the professional-facing application is already established.  

"Care plans are now accessible to any Londoner who has a UCP through the NHS App," explained Francesca Leithold from Better and added that in the future, there will be other customers added. "As the UCP grows with the number of care plans, it will also grow with the number of people accessing their care plans via the NHS App," she also said.

Plans to enable patients to update their care plans 

Initially granting view-only access, plans are underway to enable patients to update relevant sections of their care plans through the NHS App themselves. This will empower patients to make changes and contribute to their care plans and to make changes to the 'About Me' section. It will ensure immediate reflection of changes in both professional and patient-facing interfaces. 

The UCP is also evolving to account for more cohorts of patients. It has an initial focus on palliative care but is extending to a variety of new use cases, among them frailty, dementia, learning disabilities & autism, and sickle cell. The updated UCP will be available in the NHS App as well.

The integration between the Universal Care Plan and the NHS App simplifies access and makes patient involvement in their healthcare journey more accessible.

Leveraging low code and NHS App integration

All of the UCP information accessed by patients in the NHS App and by clinicians in the professional-facing application is built in Better Studio, a healthcare-specific low-code application which sits on top of a single open vendor-neutral clinical data repository. This allows organisations to create professional-facing applications and make real-time information available for patients in the NHS App that meets NHS style and accessibility guidelines. This provides an exciting and flexible option for organisations to control how they build and deliver content across healthcare sectors and enable patient access.