This website uses text messaging to save the NHS millions
DrDoctor wants to take the pain out of dealing with the NHS — and save the health service millions of pounds in the process. It’s doing it by tackling one of the simplest, yet most frustrating, aspects of dealing with hospitals in the UK: the paperwork.
“Lots of inefficiencies in the health service are due to patients not being communicated with very well”
Founder Tom Whicher was working as a consultant, but three years ago found himself annoyed by the bureaucratic hoops that patients and staff had to jump through just to get the simplest appointments booked. “Lots of inefficiencies in the health service are due to patients not being communicated with very well,” he says. He, and fellow consultants Peran Pengelly and Rinesh Amin, felt that there had to be a way to use technology to cut out some of this burden. “We took what we’d already learned from making hospitals more efficient, and we set out to make the whole process of accessing healthcare more efficient, and also more cost-effective.”
They built DrDoctor, a website and text messaging service that removes the need to call someone up to book an appointment — and also saves the need to physically post out test results to patients, instead sending them out over an app, saving both patients and hospitals the cost of those trips. It replaces sitting on the phone, waiting for someone to answer, with a few quick button presses — changing your appointment is as easy as changing one for the Apple Store.
We thought we’d build a smartphone app at first, but actually we ended up building something that used text messages and a .co.uk website because patients told us that that was what they would find most useful.
Figuring out exactly what DrDoctor needed to do was pretty simple — they were “lucky”, Whicher explains, that when they first went to Frimley Park Hospital in Surrey, the management was happy to let them sit in the outpatient clinics and interview patients and staff about their experiences. “Just from sitting and talking to people, we built some prototypes. We thought we’d build a smartphone app at first, but actually we ended up building something that used text messages and a .co.uk website because patients told us that that was what they would find most useful.”
And hospital administrators were doubly easy to convince to give DrDoctor a shot once they had been told it could both save money and make patients happier. “That double-pronged approach made it easier, and in the modern NHS you need that,” says Whicher.
There are now five hospitals using the full DrDoctor app, with a further 20 using a stripped-back, SMS-only version. So far, Whicher claims that the system handles 220,000 text messages a month, and the average saving per hospital comes to £1.3 million — thanks to reduced waiting times, and a significant reduction in missed appointments. “Patients and admins are very positive about it,” he says. “We gather a patient experience score of our own on .uk, and we know that the service reduces stress and is convenient. Historically, if you’re a hospital admin, you have loads of paperwork, phones are always flying off the hook, and you’re trying desperately to keep on top of things. That combination of that million pound plus saving with a better patient and admin experience is really important.”
The next stages, Whicher explains, are to try and cover even more of the health service, primarily by starting to try and roll it out to GP surgeries as well. “That means for patients you have one place to view your care across your GP, your hospital, your community provider, whatever it might be. We also want to link up with what other tech companies doing, and create a seamless end-to-end process.”
DrDoctor has been funded by Nominet’s charitable foundation — Nominet Trust.
This story is one of 30 celebrating the launch of .uk domain names in 1985. To read the others visit our 30 Years of .uk hub. To start your own .uk story check out www.agreatplacetobe.uk.
