Imperial College Healthcare to pilot digital ‘self-serve’ booking
Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust will pilot a digital booking system after trialling a ‘choice booking’ process for outpatient appointments this year.
The ‘choice booking’ approach, which has been used for more than 2,000 ‘follow-up’ appointments since January 2025 in clinics across five services, involves a phone call offering patients a choice of dates and times, six to eight weeks in advance of their appointment.
Work is underway to introduce a digital booking system, supplied by DrDoctor, instead of a telephone call, for patients to book a suitable appointment time online themselves.
Dr Amrish Mehta, lead for Imperial College Healthcare’s outpatient transformation programme, said: “Offering patients a choice of slots closer to their appointment time means they are less likely to have clashes or forget to attend, and ensuring scheduling factors for the clinical teams are considered before appointments are offered means we reduce clinic cancellations.
“We are now working on piloting a digital ‘self-serve’ option, making it even more convenient for patients to book or change appointments and, at the same time, freeing up our staff to support patients who aren’t easily able to use digital platforms or who have additional needs.”
The trust hopes to launch the digital booking system in summer 2025 at the clinics involved in the ongoing pilot.
Since implementing the ‘choice booking’ process, the trust says that hospital-initiated cancellations have fallen by more than 11%, patient-initiated cancellations have dropped by almost 4% and the proportion of patients who do not attend appointments has fallen by more than 4%.
Matt Purcell, regional transformation lead at DrDoctor, said: “Imperial College Healthcare NHS Foundation has already seen the benefits of a partial booking model (or ‘choice booking’) – seeing a reduction in wasted slots and giving patients the flexibility to book appointments eight weeks in advance, as opposed to 18 months.
“Now, the trust is set to become the first in the UK to launch automated scheduling at scale, using DrDoctor’s industry-leading HybridOS platform.
“This advanced, first-of-its-kind solution deployed on top of choice booking will enable around 65% of patients to book their own appointments, supported by advanced real-time two-way automation.
“By adopting automated scheduling through DrDoctor’s HybridOS platform, Imperial College Healthcare is setting a new standard for modern outpatient care – driving down administrative costs, reducing missed appointments, improving access for patients, and allowing healthcare professionals to focus on delivering the best possible care.”
Outpatient care is the most widely used service that Imperial College Healthcare offers, with more than 800,000 appointments taking place each year.
The trust’s improvement programme is focused on redesigning its models of care as well as the booking and wider administrative processes.
In January 2025, a separate pilot at Imperial College Healthcare was launched, in which remote MRI scans were conducted with the aim of reducing wait times and increasing patient choice. The pilot will continue until the end of July 2025.
