Giving you easy and quick access to your health records | News

Service users aged 14 years and above from our Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) will now have the ability to quickly and easily access their personal health records in one place with the introduction of a new digital platform.

Patients Know Best (PKB) is a digital platform that gives the service user secure access to their health record via an online portal. It can be used to store their medical and care information securely in one place.

Our CAMHS service will be the first of its kind across the NHS to provide children and young adults with a personal held record portal. NHS England will use our pilot with our CAMHS service as a blueprint to enable roll-out to other CAMHS services nationally.

Sarah Wilkins, Chief Digital and Information Officer at the North London Mental Health Partnership said: "We’re excited to pioneer the use of Patient Knows Best across our CAMHS services and explore how it can give our patients and service users direct access to their clinical records and transform the delivery of services for this cohort of our population."

Once service users have registered for PKB, they will initially be able to see their appointment information. In the future, as we enable more features they will be able to see more information including crisis plans and respond to assessment questionnaires. The service user will also have the ability, if they wish, to share their PKB portal with family, carers and other professionals.

Emily Burch, Chief Nursing Information Officer, at the North London Mental Health Partnership, said "For children and young adults today’s technology isn’t redefining a generation, this generation are redefining technology and how it is used. They have grown up in the digital revolution and the expectation is for data and information to be at their fingertips and interact the way they want. We are excited to be working alongside our children and young adults with PKB to design a patient held record that delivers direct access to records for our CAMHS population and transform the delivery of care, driven and co-designed by our service users."

Sally Rennison, Chief Commercial Officer for Patients Know Best, said: "It is great to see both an expansion in our work supporting Mental Health Services, but also within North Central London. After increased usage over the last five years in North West London, and over the last two years in North East London, it will be a real step forward for Barnet Enfield and Haringay (BEH) patients who span mental health and physical health services across the North London region, to now be able to access and contribute to a joined up record across these localities. So many services will benefit from the blueprint BEH is looking to produce, and we are so pleased to be able to support them with the delivery of this."

The use of Patient Knows Best in both child and adult services will also support the Partnership in effectively monitoring service users remotely and will enable them to quickly identify when their mental health has deteriorated, where inpatient crisis support may have otherwise been required.

Whilst we are starting our rollout with CAMHS service users, by partnering with Patients Know Best we aim to have PKB available to all service users, both adults and children and young people, in future.