The first clinical messaging app to be approved for the NHS Apps Library has been made available to more than 10,000 employees at London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust, in a bid to help staff communicate with each other and with patients more effectively during the COVID-19 crisis.

The Trust has worked with healthtech start-up Hospify to make the company’s secure messaging app available to thousands of staff across its organisation.

The platform, which became the first general-use medical messaging app to be approved for the official NHS Apps Library in early March, was co-founded and developed by NHS vascular surgeon Neville Dastur and former technology journalist James Flint.

Hospify will allow teams at London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust to coordinate and message each other instantly using their mobile devices, whilst keeping communication secure and compliant with data protection rules. Teams can create chat groups, talk directly, and contact external parties to help share information safely and instantly at a time when close interaction is being reduced and many staff and patients are in self-isolation.

Sonia Patel, chief information officer at London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust said: “Hospify’s approved messaging app provides our people with a critical communication channel at what is an extraordinarily challenging time. Rolling out this service not only helps our teams to communicate at a time when normal interactions are more challenging but is a step in a wider strategy to improve our digital offering to all health and social care staff.”

The Hospify app offers similar functionality to popular consumer messaging apps. Staff using the app will be able to take part in one-to-one and group messaging and exchange unlimited text and photo messages, with additional features to protect privacy such as a built-in passcode, the masking of personal details such as phone numbers or email addresses, and no harvesting of behavioural or other metadata that could otherwise be resold for marketing or advertising purposes.

For clinical teams and trust management, the Hospify Hub online admin portal helps with onboarding staff and provides the trust with the ability to broadcast important messages and document attachments to keep staff quickly apprised of new developments. This can be used to communicate with the trust’s entire staff or to target individual teams and shifts, without the need for people to have access to a PC.

James Flint, CEO of Hospify, said: “The onset of coronavirus has underlined the growing importance effective digital clinical communications. Though consumer alternatives do exist, our healthcare professionals need access to technologies built for their needs, technologies that are easy to use and that they know they can trust to keep sensitive information secure, that can maintain privacy for staff and patients, and that have been rigorously tested and approved for the NHS.” 

Since the COVID-19 outbreak hit the UK, Hospify has seen a rapid growth in use, and has been downloaded by healthcare professionals spread across more than 150 hospitals and other clinical sites across the country.

NHS Wales, Devon CCG and individual NHS trusts including London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust, Lincolnshire Community NHS Trust, Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust and South Tyneside NHS Trust have also all signed off the app for use by their employees.

Neville Dastur, chief technology officer at Hospify, said: “Thousands of health professionals and patients are now using our technology, confident that they can communicate safely and quickly with all the ease and efficiency of the best consumer messaging apps, but without any compromise to their data or privacy.”