For our people – designed and developed with our people
The Public-Facing Digital Services (PFDS) programme offers digital tools, services and support to connect our citizens to the information and services they need, when they need them.
Our aim is to enable people to access care in a convenient and coordinated way, to promote independence through the everyday digitals tools that we are all familiar with.
To learn more about our Public-Facing Digital Service projects, watch this short video.
The Public-Facing Digital Services (PFDS) programme offers digital tools, services and support to connect our citizens to the information and services they need, when they need them. Our aim is to enable people to access care in a convenient and coordinated way, to promote independence through the everyday digitals tools that we are all familiar with.
Technology Enabled Care (TEC) supports our citizens to reduce their reliance on, and delay the need to unnecessarily use health and social care services. The benefits of TEC include helping patients to self-manage long-term conditions, while also improving their quality of life by enabling them to live safely in their own homes where possible. For our workforce, TEC allows our teams to work smarter by releasing and saving time.
The ICS is formulating a series of ‘proof of concept’ projects using TEC to build a strong evidence base that will support the wider integration of TEC across the ICS pathways. Telehealth, telecare, telemedicine, smart home technology, motion detectors, wearable devices, remote consultation and video conferencing, are all categorised as Technology Enabled Care.
The objective for this programme is to systematically reduce the health and technological inequalities across our region. The Digital Inclusion project supports our citizens to get online and access the digital tools, support and services that improve their health, care and wellbeing. Furthermore, we’re helping people to increase their confidence in using technology, while also doing our best to ensure that nobody is excluded due to any socio-economic factors.
Summary
In 2019, the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Integrated Care System (ICS) selected Patients Know Best (PKB) and NHS Digital to develop a partnership solution which would offer their population all the PKB features, functionality and data, inside the national NHS App interface. As a result, PKB via Digital Notts, became one of the first products to integrate with NHS login’s new encrypted single sign-on and the first personal health record to integrate with the NHS App.
The ICS co-designed and pioneered this integration in March 2020. The integration supported the ICS to fulfil the requirements of the Public-Facing Digital Services mandate for empowering local people to better manage their health, to self-care, self-manage and self-serve. However, the launch came as the impact of the global COVID-19 crisis was being realised. This propelled registered patients to safely self-manage their care, with full control over who could see their information and provide support remotely.
Our citizens will be better placed to manage their care and make better, more informed decisions about their own care and treatments with access to the Nottinghamshire Personal Health & Care Record or through the NHS App. This offers citizens the tools and data to help them manage their health and wellbeing from the palms of their hands, and from the comfort of their own homes – or wherever they may be.
The Notts NHS App combines services and information from the NHS App with
broader range of features from the Patients Know Best platform. This online medical record is owned by patients and offers a simple and secure way of accessing personal medical data. It also allows patients to add, manage and organise their health and care from a smartphone, tablet device or web browser. Furthermore, patients can choose to securely share parts of their record with anyone that would benefit from seeing their information, such as loved ones, healthcare professionals and other health or care organisations involved in their wellbeing or recovery.
The Notts NHS App empowers our local population to get the right care and support when they need it most, while also offering the ability to self-manage their care in between. Furthermore, it is joining up information and data for professionals, allowing all our doctors, nurses, social care staff, and community/ voluntary providers, to see a single patient record so that everyone involved in the patient’s care, always has the right information to provide the best care.
My mum has an early onset of dementia and lives over 60 miles away from me. I often get phone calls from her, panicking and upset because she has had a letter from the GP or hospital and she doesn't understand. She finds it very stressful reading it to me over the phone, so I usually end up having to drive to her to read it through with her face to face. This is hard to do in a timely fashion during the working week. If my mum had access to her Personal Health and Care Record, she would be able to share access with me and I would be able to access her correspondence remotely and communicate with her health and care team. This would reduce anxiety for my mum, enable me to have a clear understanding of her care pathways and also reduce the need for me to travel.
Jane, Carer
Digital health tools are increasingly able to connect people to the information and services they need, when they need them. As such, this project aims to enable people to access the same care in a convenient and coordinated way across our region, while promoting independence using the digital tools we have all become accustomed to.
This project involves a series of interdependent projects across the ICS that increase the capability of our existing systems i.e. by building or adding new functionality, or by implementing new
systems across identified pathways, to meet the needs of our population.
For example, we are piloting the use of the remote diagnostic solution – TekiHealth, to help reduce our visits to care homes from 35 minutes to 10 minutes. All appointments using TekiHealth are measured to gather accurate timings. This data will be compared with the time it would otherwise take for a GP to complete the appointment face-to-face. This will determine if all appointments can be reduced to an average of 10 minutes each.
The Digital Notts team are offering further support this April to help people Spring into the NHS App. From Monday 20 to Friday 24 April 2026, the Digital Notts team will be visiting GP practices across Nottingham and Nottinghamshire to deliver engagement sessions aimed at helping patients build confidence in using the NHS App.
Nottingham City Libraries are hosting free Digital Drop-In hubs offering welcoming, one-to-one support to help residents build confidence with everyday digital tasks. These relaxed sessions at Nottingham Central Library and Hyson Green Library give people the chance to learn at their own pace in a friendly, trusted community space.
Get Online Week 2025: Support available at Nottingham and Nottinghamshire GP Practices to help people use the NHS App. This year will see the return
