Today, we are excited to announce iPLATO Healthcare is the only chosen provider to switch SMS messages to data messages for England’s two leading patient-facing apps. 

For every £1 million currently spent on SMS messages with other systems, we expect to reduce the associated communication costs by £750,000 through our unique ability to help commissioners control costs and our commitment to continuous innovation in developing our smart gateway. 

Following the successful development of a unique feature in our smart gateway, there will be an automatic switch over from traditional SMS messaging to free and secure in-app messaging on the myGP app and the NHS app. This move is set to save the NHS millions in communication costs. The switch will be added free of charge to any practices subject to the functionality meeting rigorous clinical safety and information governance requirements. 

Already offering superior cost control, our patient communication platform known as the ‘myGP platform’, offers multi-channel patient engagement tools. Pre-paid messaging bundles, comprehensive reporting and best practice templates are supported by proactive customer success management to optimise all designs of patient communication programmes. In fact, compared to other communication systems, the myGP Platform has already been proven to halve SMS volume. 

This significant announcement is projected to reduce costs by another 50-80% by switching SMS messages to free in-app messages.

“Improving control and transparency, maximising benefits, and reducing waste are all of paramount importance to our practice users and NHS commissioners. We already had the edge over alternatives in the delivery of business cases and return on investment from patient communications. Expanding our smart gateway to switch SMS messages over to data messaging for the 22 million users* of the NHS app in addition to everything else we do will be game-changing.”

Luke Wyatt, iPLATO Healthcare Director of Sales & Marketing

*NHS Digital, 31 December, 2021