eConsult Health

eConsult eHub

Our eHub model has been designed to generate further efficiencies from eConsult by working at scale across a PCN by centralising administrative/back-office requirements across multiple sites, where appropriate utilising the full breadth of a team of AHPs and utilising any clinical capacity pockets that exist across multiple teams

Features

• Digital connectivity of eConsult across multiple practices
• Fully integrated with the users clinical system
• Customisable interface to meet users local configuration needs
• Integrated SMS, email to support patient management
• Customisable ad hoc and planned demand management options
• Direct allocation of requests to specific practice roles
• NHS Mail Single Sign On for user authentication
• Tagging to support workflow configuration

Benefits

• Increased efficiency of the digital GP model
• Consistent patient experience across a PCN/group of practices
• Enhanced practice resilience
• Improved retention and recruitment
• Enhanced use of practice multi disciplinary teams
• Optimise funding of the Network Contract DES
• Improved work, life balance through flexible working options
• Enhancing clinical and non-clinical digital GP expertise

£0.10 to £0.10 a licence

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at commercial@econsult.health. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 14

Service ID

853685375110654

Contact

Aman Kundraw
020 7062 5737
commercial@econsult.health

Service scope

• Software add-on or extension: Yes
• What software services is the service an extension to: EConsult
• Cloud deployment model: Public cloud
• Service constraints: Users require an up to date browsers
• System requirements:
  • NHS Mail
  • Robust internet connection
  • EMIS Web, SystmOne, Vision or Microtest access
  • Up to date browser
  • Suitable device (laptop, desktop, tablet, smartphone)

User support

• Email or online ticketing support: Email or online ticketing
• Support response times: Support hours 08:00 – 18:00 Monday – Friday Response times are determined by priority. In addition to email, we provide live chat support via our website and telephone support. Priority 1: Within 1 hour Priority 2: Within 2 hours Priority 3: Same day Priority 4: Same day - acknowledgement and triaged. Out of hours support: Out of hours 18:00 – 08:00 Monday – Friday. Priority 1 Within 12 hours Priority 2 Within 12 hours Priority 3 Next working day Priority 4 Next working day
• User can manage status and priority of support tickets: No
• Phone support: Yes
• Phone support availability: 9 to 5 (UK time), Monday to Friday
• Web chat support: Web chat
• Web chat support availability: 9 to 5 (UK time), Monday to Friday
• Web chat support accessibility standard: WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
• Web chat accessibility testing: We have a User Research team dedicated to ensuring a user centric design. ; This team maintain user groups of all end users (patients and clinicians), assistive users are a core component of these groups. Our User Research team regularly host interviews, focus groups and interviews with these groups to understand how our existing functionality and new feature and function (i) meets the needs of the end users, and; (ii) where adaptation is required. ; ; Customer side, we work actively to ensure that the platform is intuitive for users to ensure that the seamless interaction with customer side systems aligns to existing experiences.
• Onsite support: No
• Support levels: Support hours 08:00 – 18:00 Monday – Friday Response times are determined by priority. In addition to email, we provide live chat support via our website and telephone support. Priority 1: Within 1 hour Priority 2: Within 2 hours Priority 3: Same day Priority 4: Same day - acknowledgement and triaged. Out of hours support: Out of hours 18:00 – 08:00 Monday – Friday. Priority 1 Within 12 hours Priority 2 Within 12 hours Priority 3 Next working day Priority 4 Next working day
• Support available to third parties: Yes

Onboarding and offboarding

• Getting started: Full technical implementation and mobilisation including 2 week technical deployment, Systems and functionality training provided via a mix of channels (online, face-to-face, webinars etc). setup/user guides to provide guidance on governance and SOPs, training videos, library of on-demand webinars, scripts, manuals, templates and marketing collateral is provided via our customer portal, accessible 24/7. In addition, we hold quarterly webinars to discuss shared learning, share best practice and advise of the product roadmap.
• Service documentation: Yes
• Documentation formats:
  • HTML
  • PDF
  • Other
• Other documentation formats: Hosted videos
• End-of-contract data extraction: At the end of contract, as per national guidance all data should be saved by users to respective clinical systems, this can be undertaken by our interoperability options to provide ease and convenience. Data will stay within the users Smart Inbox for up to 8 years, but only whilst the users are customers, data is purged when the contract ends. Any data sustained in the Smart Inbox at the end of the contract can be extracted at the users request.
• End-of-contract process: Customer are required to provide a 90 day notice period. Upon request, the agreement will not auto renew. Customer will internally agree step down pathways and business continuity approach. We will support this process for smooth transition.; ; If no termination request is received, the agreement will auto-renew for 12 months.

Using the service

• Web browser interface: Yes
• Supported browsers:
  • Microsoft Edge
  • Firefox
  • Chrome
  • Safari
  • Opera
• Application to install: Yes
• Compatible operating systems: Windows
• Designed for use on mobile devices: Yes
• Differences between the mobile and desktop service: EHub is accessible via a web browser. ; ; The web version is compatible with internet browsers that carry 99% of all internet traffic (inc mobile browsers), and is written as a responsive web platform to ensure optimum display across screen sizes and devices/mobile.
• Service interface: Yes
• User support accessibility: WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
• Description of service interface: Practice side our smart inbox/dashboard is a cloud based interface that is accessed via NHS Mail Single Sign-on. This inbox can be customised by the practice, allows for full patient management and integrates with the practices clinical system.
• Accessibility standards: WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
• Accessibility testing: We have a User Research team dedicated to ensuring a user centric design. ; This team maintain user groups of all end users (patients and clinicians), assistive users are a core component of these groups. Our User Research team regularly host interviews, focus groups and interviews with these groups to understand how our existing functionality and new feature and function (i) meets the needs of the end users, and; (ii) where adaptation is required. ; ; Customer side, we work actively to ensure that the platform is intuitive for users to ensure that the seamless interaction with customer side systems aligns to existing experiences.
• API: No
• Customisation available: Yes
• Description of customisation: The eHub inbox is highly customisable to meet practice needs:; ; - Configuration of dedicated queues/inboxes to meet PCN setup; - Segregation of clinical vs admin with further indexing available; - Ad hoc and planned demand management features; - Development of localised messaging templates; - Choice of integration options; ; These customisations are undertaken by our Operations team at service deployment and can be maintained/adapted via request to our support teams at anytime during the license period.

Scaling

• Independence of resources: All processing occurs on our multi-tier, AWS London infrastructure, which is configured for elastic scaling in order to handle peaks and troughs in usage,

Analytics

• Service usage metrics: Yes
• Metrics types: All eHub users will have access to a Tableau dashboard that is integrated into the service interface. This will provide real time access data dashboards.; ; eHub data:; - All patient journeys (consultation, self-help, sign-posting); - Consultation pathways; - Patient demographics; - Time and date of use; - Contact modality (SMS, email, video, telephony); - eConsult patient management outcome; - Utilisation by role; ; Patient experience:; - Recommendation rates; - Satisfaction rates; - Anonymised patient feedback
• Reporting types:
  • Real-time dashboards
  • Regular reports
  • Reports on request

Resellers

• Supplier type: Not a reseller

Staff security

• Staff security clearance: Other security clearance
• Government security clearance: None

Asset protection

• Knowledge of data storage and processing locations: Yes
• Data storage and processing locations: United Kingdom
• User control over data storage and processing locations: No
• Datacentre security standards: Managed by a third party
• Penetration testing frequency: At least once a year
• Penetration testing approach: ‘IT Health Check’ performed by a Tigerscheme qualified provider or a CREST-approved service provider
• Protecting data at rest:
  • Physical access control, complying with CSA CCM v3.0
  • Encryption of all physical media
  • Scale, obfuscating techniques, or data storage sharding
• Data sanitisation process: Yes
• Data sanitisation type: Deleted data can’t be directly accessed
• Equipment disposal approach: A third-party destruction service

Data importing and exporting

• Data export approach: If a customer, user or patient requests a documented data extract, we provide a structured CSV file detail all data that we hold about them.; ; Requests can be made directly to our first line support team who operate on a 24 hour SLA if requests are received between 9am - 5pm, Monday to Friday.
• Data export formats: CSV
• Data import formats: Other
• Other data import formats: N/A - users cannot upload their data into the service

Data-in-transit protection

• Data protection between buyer and supplier networks:
  • Private network or public sector network
  • TLS (version 1.2 or above)
  • Bonded fibre optic connections
• Data protection within supplier network:
  • TLS (version 1.2 or above)
  • IPsec or TLS VPN gateway

Availability and resilience

• Guaranteed availability: Guaranteed availability of 99.9% - this excludes planned downtime for regular product releases and spot fixes. This is communicated to customers well in advance. ; ; All product releases are undertaken at the quietest period of usage and typically are completed as "blue/green" deployments (i.e. no downtime). No refund or credit scheme is currently in place.
• Approach to resilience: Housed in UK-based, multi-region, Tier 3 Data Centres for high availability and resilience.; ; Our range of products are utilised by more than 2000 unique organisations UK wide, and uptime has been stable at 99.9% for last 24 months. ; ; Our products are housed on a multi-region cloud, using elastic scaling to handle the peaks and troughs in usage.
• Outage reporting: We run a multi channel approach to maximise the opportunity of users to review and understand any communication shared on outages. This includes:; - Emails to affected users.; - A "status page" on our corporate website ; - Use of Social media (Facebook and Twitter); - Messaging shared within our WhatsApp user group; - Patient messaging via our patients facing, cloud based interface; - If appropriate, phone calls to users (dependant upon scale); ; In addition, we undertake full business investigation of any outages to fully understand what occurred and what learnings we can take from it.; An abstract of this review and any changes being undertaken are shared with users within our monthly newsletters.

Identity and authentication

• User authentication needed: Yes
• User authentication:
  • Username or password
  • Other
• Other user authentication: NHS Mail Single Sign On
• Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels: All access is via a VPN, using MFA and SSH keys
• Access restriction testing frequency: At least every 6 months
• Management access authentication:
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Public key authentication (including by TLS client certificate)
  • Identity federation with existing provider (for example Google Apps)
  • Dedicated link (for example VPN)
  • Username or password

Audit information for users

• Access to user activity audit information: Users contact the support team to get audit information
• How long user audit data is stored for: At least 12 months
• Access to supplier activity audit information: Users contact the support team to get audit information
• How long supplier audit data is stored for: At least 12 months
• How long system logs are stored for: At least 12 months

Standards and certifications

• ISO/IEC 27001 certification: Yes
• Who accredited the ISO/IEC 27001: Alcumus ISOQAR
• ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation date: 07/12/2021
• What the ISO/IEC 27001 doesn’t cover: All business areas are covered.
• ISO 28000:2007 certification: No
• CSA STAR certification: No
• PCI certification: No
• Cyber essentials: Yes
• Cyber essentials plus: Yes
• Other security certifications: No

Security governance

• Named board-level person responsible for service security: Yes
• Security governance certified: Yes
• Security governance standards: ISO/IEC 27001
• Information security policies and processes: We have a broad range of policies to support our ISO27001 certification.; We use a Jira add in to ensure that all polices are read and confirmed by staff.; Monthly internal audits are performed to validate clauses of the standard.; The Information Security and Risk manager reports to the Chief operating Officer, who sits on the Exec board.; As a continous improvement environment, we have a CAPA (Corrective Actions/Preventative Actions) process in place, which we record non-conformace and general security improvements.; Security incidents are reported via Jira Service Desk on a dedicated request offering.

Operational security

• Configuration and change management standard: Supplier-defined controls
• Configuration and change management approach: We have formal change management processes in place with AWS, recording all changes to production as part of our ISO27001 ISMS.
• Vulnerability management type: Supplier-defined controls
• Vulnerability management approach: We use Codacy and Snyk for code quality and library vulnerabiities.; We perform quarterly Vulnerability scans and yearly Penetration testing (or on major release); We are signed up to the NCSC Weekly Threat Report and also get threat reports from NHS England and our security partner; ; Critical risk vulnerabilities – 2 Business days; High risk vulnerabilities – 5 Business days; Medium risk vulnerabilities – 15 Business days; Low risk vulnerabilities – 30 Business days
• Protective monitoring type: Supplier-defined controls
• Protective monitoring approach: We use Datadog for all security alerting.; Datadog monitors events such as component issues, to service issues to security issues, for example, a server fails to start as a component issue, failure to connect to NHS Login service as a service issue and excessive connection attempts by one address made in quick succession.; All of these alerts are available in the console and via Slack alerts
• Incident management type: Supplier-defined controls
• Incident management approach: A Incident Management policy is in place.; Incidents are investigated and resolved. This could lead to a change request. ; Service impacting issues are reported on our status page. https://status.econsult.net ; Major incidents are reported to the NHS England helpdesk and a full incident report is generated.; ; Clinical incidents are reported via the website and our Clinical governance team investigate each one thoroughly. Responding back promptly and offering a full explanation of our findings at the end of the investigation.

Secure development

• Approach to secure software development best practice: Independent review of processes (for example CESG CPA Build Standard, ISO/IEC 27034, ISO/IEC 27001 or CSA CCM v3.0)

Public sector networks

• Connection to public sector networks: Yes
• Connected networks: Health and Social Care Network (HSCN)

Social Value

• Social Value:

  Social Value

  • Fighting climate change
  • Covid-19 recovery

  Fighting climate change

  eConsult Health is committed to achieving Net Zero emissions by 2050 for emissions scopes 1, 2 and 3. This commitment was made on 10 November 2023 by the Executive Team with support from the Board. This statement is publically available on the eConsult website. Emissions Scope 1 is not relevant, we do not operate company fleet vehicles. Emissions Scope 2 - eConsult Health is committed to contributing to effective stewardship of the environment. We conduct all aspects of our activities in accordance with approved, sustainable and acceptable environmental practices, and operate within current environmental legislation. Our Environmental and Sustainability Policy is reviewed by all staff during onboarding and annually, aiming to: comply with current environmental legislation, consider and assess best practice; taking action where necessary to continuously improve environmental practice, emphasise to all employees at all levels their responsibility to environmental wellbeing; providing training where applicable, audit our environmental and sustainability performance, train and educate staff on behaviours that they can exhibit to reduce waste and use resources more efficiently e.g. run a paper free office and maximise the productivity of remote meetings to reduce requirement on daily commuting. Emissions Scope 3 - we offer volunteering opportunities for all staff through our Volunteering Leave Policy, with two paid days per year for employees to undertake activities that can encourage direct positive impact. The eConsult Health business travel policy ensures that only travel that is absolutely necessary is undertaken. Employee commuting has significantly decreased post COVID 19 pandemic, where an approximate average of 10 people attend the London office per working day. We support a reduction of emissions through enabling staff to work from home. We offer an employee benefit, “Bike2Work Scheme”, enabling staff that live within an appropriate distance to purchase a bike for commuting.

  Covid-19 recovery

  eConsult Health recognises the employment, skills and other return to work issues in the healthcare and technology sectors following COVID 19. There have been growth opportunities in health technology, e.g. the mandation of online consultation in 2020 to GP practices and a move towards digital triage in urgent & emergency care. We have a direct positive impact on COVID 19 recovery, with remote digital consultations enabling contact free assessments and protecting the most vulnerable. eConsult has a rigorous and fair approach to recruitment. We implement gold standard recruitment practices and offer competitive employment conditions, e.g. enhanced benefits package, enhanced parental leave, sickness cover and annual leave. This ensures that we remain competitive in the marketplace and attract good candidates from all backgrounds. We take measures to ensure equality and accessibility to employment and will continue to do so for the duration of the contract. We actively encourage more women to apply to job roles through the use of “gender decoder” software to review all job descriptions and remove masculine bias. We focus on employing the best suited person for the role, maximising success with onboarding and minimising staff turnover. Within eConsult, during COVID 19 we initiated full remote working in March 2020 (having been a company where everyone worked in the office five days a week). Over the subsequent two years, we moved to a more flexible working model, and now the team work in the office 2-3 days a week. This has a direct beneficial impact on our staff, particularly those with families. We conduct desk assessments for every member of staff in the office and ensure that they have the appropriate equipment and conditions to work safely at home.

Pricing

• Price: £0.10 to £0.10 a licence
• Discount for educational organisations: No
• Free trial available: No

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at commercial@econsult.health. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.