Patient Portal

As a social enterprise, Patients Know Best (PKB) created the world’s first patient-controlled medical records platform delivering the benefits of both an health information exchange and patient portal.


PKB takes a copy of all the health information held about an individual and creates one integrated patient-controlled record. The patient or a professional (with consent from the patient) can invite whomever they want to the record, from clinicians to carers as well as charities and support groups. This brings together all care providers from community care, to primary and acute care providers. Patients can view their contacts and message groups of them via the Discussion tab. The site encourages self-management with care planning and medication information available at any time. Our integration with over 100 apps and devices, as well as symptom trackers and surveys sent out by the clinician, allows the patient to monitor their health and wellbeing.


PKB’s web based patient portal user interface has been deployed across whole populations as well as a diverse set of specialities, such as end-of-life care, oncology, rare-diseases, long-term conditions, mental health, and proactive health and wellbeing programmes. It has been used and has functionality to:

  • Produce, send and analyse surveys, questionnaires or assessments, for example the Friends and Family Test, standardised outcome measures, well being questionnaires, PROMS and PREMS
  • Ability to produce an unlimited number of bespoke care plan templates that can cover treatment, self-management, outcomes, therapy plans, assessment and discharge information etc. Care plans built in HTML and can include educational videos, pictures and documents. Designed to complement or replace existing paper-based approaches.
  • Messaging between patient-healthcare professional and professional-professional, with the ability to attach pictures, videos or documentation
  • Web video between patient-healthcare professional (i.e. virtual clinics) and professional-professional (e.g. MDT meetings), with the session documented in a secure environment
  • Symptom tracking with alerts for professionals – patients can remotely track a predefined list of symptoms and have thresholds set for alarms to notify professionals of deterioration in wellbeing
  • Resource library that can be customised for each team and have entries added by patients, carers or professionals
  • Appointment booking (if necessary) and reminders
  • Send letters and reports electronically, to multiple users, remotely and securely
  • Capture information for national datasets, e.g. HARS (HIV and AIDS Reporting System), NDTMS, IAPT minimum dataset
  • Ability to download and analyse data from surveys and care plans to assess clinical outcomes and audit the service, using external data analytic tools
  • Patient can send home measurements back to record, e.g. blood glucose readings, blood pressure, diet and activity information. PKB already integrated with over 100+ devices and apps.
  • Integration with any other third party apps or devices and bespoke software, where necessary/possible via REST APIs
  • Accessible via the NHS App at a localities request


PKB can be the whole vertical stack from Integrated Digital Care Record (IDCR), data storage, patient portal, personal health record or sit on top of clinician-facing IDCR with PKB’s consent layer driving permissions. PKB is translated into 19 languages, and used in 54 sites across 8 countries, ranging from small scale specialist services, such as rare diseases (e.g. Fair Medicine), to an entire health economy, such as in North-West London covering 2.3 million people (www.careinformationexchange-nwl.nhs.uk)

This extensive feature set results in direct cash-releasing benefits and improved outcomes; through workflow efficiencies for healthcare professionals, and improved clinical outcomes and patient experience for the customer. Efficiencies are wide ranging; from providing a paperless service and remote consultations, to a reduction in unplanned episodes of care, service burden and increased throughput.