Almost uniquely amongst communication platforms integrated with EMIS and Systm1, Hero allows practices to send cross-organisational self-booking links. These booking links are for appointments at your partner sites - for example, your PCN hubsite or other practices in your PCN. You might need to do this for ARRS role appointments that are not being delivered from your EMIS or S1 instance.

Generally speaking, SMS is the best way to contact patients - SMS has been shown to have a higher level of engagement than email. That said, certain patients may prefer email communication, email is free (unlike SMS) and has no restrictions on length (SMS is restricted to ~600 characters per message). We offer both SMS and Email, with your messages saving back into the patient's record in EMIS or TPP's Systm1.

When corresponding with a patient, you have the option of allowing the patient to reply. If selected, a secure web-link is included in the outbound message to the patient. The patient can click this link to reply. Before submitting the response, they confirm their date of birth to validate their identity. Then they are able to submit a one-time response to your message, including uploading documents or images. For example, a patient could submit an image of a wound for review. Once submitted, the response can be viewed and saved to the patient's record in EMIS or Systm1.

There are occasions where you want to share a document with a patient, for example a test result, signed sick note or an image. Using Hero, you can either retrieve a file from the patient's clinical record or you can upload a file from your desktop. The document is then accessed by the patient via a secure web-link (URL), encrypted with their date of birth and only available for 28 days. A copy of the sent message can be saved back to the patient's record for audit purposes.

There are a number of messaging systems available to users of EMIS Web and Systm1, including Hero, Accurx, iPlato and Mjog. Patient communication is a vital part of clinician and administrator workflow; it must be easy to access, secure, connected to the clinical record system for reading and writing from the record, seamless for patients to use and functional effectively for individual and PCN practices. Hero Health ticks all of these boxes, offering a best-in-class solution for patient communication.

The Hero-EMIS integration is especially rich, with deep rooted appointment functionality offering unparalleled online booking and self-booking link functionality. Additionally, EMIS users at either individual practices or hubsite practices can benefit from Hero, and utilise Hero's cross-organisational booking links.

Hero's individual messaging can be accessed in the context of your clinical record system using the Hero toolbar, or from the Hero application accessed through Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge. In the browser, you find the relevant patient's record and construct your message. The toolbar will detect the selected patient, and retrieve their details directly.

Gone are the days of getting patients to fill in paper forms upon arrival at a practice. With Hero Health, you can build a custom questionnaire or one of our template questionnaires, and share this with your patient for completion by SMS or Email. The patient can access the questionnaire by confirming their date of birth. Questionnaires can be built to contain a variety of fields including short-text, long-text, drop-downs, multiple choice, checkboxes and file uploads. Once submitted by the patient, the questionnaire response can be viewed and saved to the patient's record in EMIS or Systm1.

This could be during an appointment when you want to send a patient relevant information as a reminder (for example, to relevant NICE guidance), it could be post-appointment as a follow-up (for example, asking the patient to submit a photo of the examined wound in 3 days time or requesting them to book a follow-up appointment) or it could be unprompted (for example, requesting they complete an annual smoking review questionnaire).