Trials begin with six practices with plans to incorporate more in the coming months
NHS England has begun a private beta trial with six GP practices across the country to enable patients to register online.
The move is part of the movement towards a paperless NHS and follows discovery and alpha phases in which the organisation took feedback from GPs about the information they require, such as key facts about the patient’s health, in the registration process.
The service currently allows people to submit registration details and supporting information through an online form.
An NHS transformation blogpost says the earlier phases included analysis of the types of information that are usually required, and led to the view that ‘new patient’ information is needed as part of the ‘minimum viable product’ for the private beta.
The plans for the next few weeks are to analyse feedback from service users, including patients and practice staff, and bring in more practices in key groups, such as those near universities that receive a lot of new registrations at the beginning of term. The team also wants to understand how to prepare itself technically and organisationally to scale up the service to dozens or even hundreds of practices.
It has identified longer term requirements, such as how to incorporate supporting proofs such as identification and address in the process, and how to make the service digital from start to finish.
So far there is no indication of when the service would be ready to go live.
Image from NHS England, Open Government Licence v3.0
