Company:DrDoctor

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DrDoctor is a booking and patient interaction software company based in London. It was founded by Perran Pengelly, Rinesh Amin and Tom Whicher in 2012.

DrDoctor exhibition stand

It was chosen as an innovation fellow by the NHS Innovation Accelerator in 2016 and a very detailed prospectus for the DrDoctor Patient Engagement Platform is featured on the GOV.UK Digital Marketplace.

It is said to reduce the number of missed appointments and to make it easier and more convenient for patients to make and manage bookings. It is used by 30 NHS trusts in England including Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust which used it to automate the clinic booking, rescheduling and reminder system. It communicates with patients online, by text message, or by email and is integrated with the patient administration system.

It entered a four-year contract with Aneurin Bevan Local Health Board in May 2017 to measure and track patient outcomes. It had already digitised communication with patients and appointment management across the trust's 10 sites in 2016.

When used at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust it saved the trust £2.2 million. Patient satisfaction was said to be 96%.

In October 2017 NHS England financed a trial in 10 more hospitals, costing £1.5 million, varying from small specialist sites to large inner-city establishments, to test the impact of the technology. It is hoped that each hospital could save £2 million a year by reducing the number of missed appointments, of which there are about eight million a year, and cutting down on postage costs. Simon Stevens said “This technology has the potential to be a triple win for the NHS by making life easier for patients, saving money and improving appointment efficiency.”

Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust started using the text messaging service in ophthalmology, gastroenterology and respiratory services in 2019 and urged patients to ensure their contact details were up-to-date in order to make it effective.

Whicher was reported in 2020 as saying that "It feels as if someone's taken the handbrake off the NHS" as it was said that "The telemedicine agenda has been accelerated by about 10 years, simply because it is not safe or practical to do much of the traditional medical model." In April 2020 the company released a COVID-19 toolkit free of license fees to any hospital that required it. This included Broadcast Messaging and Video Consultation services and, a digital Symptom Assessment Tracker. Later in the year it provided offered its QuickBook solution to streamline the vaccination booking process to all NHS trusts and Health Boards. It was claimed that it would enable trusts to create a month’s worth of vaccination appointments in five minutes and allowing staff to choose dates and times that suited them.

The company raised £3 million from venture capital firms in September 2020 to expand its remote patient management and data solutions. It was then partnered with 30 NHS Trusts and Health Boards across England and Wales.

In June 2021 it was providing support to more than 30 NHS organisations for appointments management, patient engagement and virtual consultation. The company claimed that their approach could release additional capacity for 516,805 additional appointments per week. Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust started using the digital-first pathway for its endoscopy diagnostic service in 2021. This allows them to send reminder messages, digital letters, and assessments to patients, reducing time and money spent on post and telephones. it reduces waiting lists and cancellations. Time taken for endoscopy operations has reduced on average from 26 minutes to just under 19 minutes.

The company also offers support for the patient-initiated follow-up approach. NHS England’s Operational Planning Guidance for December 2021 set a target for 1.5% of all outpatient attendances to be on a PIFU pathway, but few trusts reached the target. Tom Whicher, the chief executive, claimed that many trusts approach is not sufficiently integrated to achieve benefits in his session at Digital Health Rewired 2022. Sir Jim Mackey has urged for PIFU to be expanded on an “industrial scale". Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is one of four PIFU pilot NHS trusts. The company press release claimed that “There is potential for 80 to 90 per cent of patients to be placed on a PIFU pathway once the clinician and the patient agree that it is the correct action to take. The most vulnerable patients will remain on a clinician-initiated follow-up pathway", but the 90% figure was not supported by the trust. Whicher said more clarity was needed as to what PIFU meant. Healthwatch England said scrapping needless follow-up appointments would be welcome, but had concerns about vulnerable groups.

Reviews of the company services on the Trustpilot website were in June 2022 mostly bad.