PRESS RELEASE 3 January 2018:
askmyGP overcomes NHS Choices search gremlins with new free webapp
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Patients are being urged more than ever to self-care, in order to cut demand on NHS GPs in the winter season. While NHS Choices provides high quality advice, until now searching the site has been hit and miss.
askmyGP, the leading online consultation platform, announces today a free version which lets patients search NHS Choices with a unique smart search algorithm.
Founder Harry Longman explains the reasoning:
“We’ve always directed patients to seek self-care advice from NHS Choices. It covers virtually every medical condition, the information is clearly presented, evidence based, and free. It carries no advertising and never tries to sell to patients, whether medications or consultations, as other sites do.”
But the weak area has been search. Put “Back of knee hurting” into NHS Choices and you’ll see “La Bomba dance workout video” – not exactly what you were hoping for.
The same phrase entered into askmyGP takes you straight to knee pain and its potential causes.
Many similar examples are exactly as entered by real patients. “3yr old holds his breath”, NHS Choices: Your guide to an echocardiogram. Or Dentures. Perhaps not.
“Had coff for over 5 weeks”, gets you Norman’s Hip Op video.
Try all these in the askmyGP demo site and compare with NHS Choices itself, even though all our content is provided by NHS Choices. What patients want is a smart but sympathetic search which won’t quibble over how they spell diarrhoea (we’ve found the right page with hundreds of spellings in askmyGP, from diria to dhearrorrea).
We don’t believe NHS Choices content should be reformatted and sold back to the NHS for private profit, as some suppliers have done. What we sell is the askmyGP online consultation system, helping more GPs and patients every week (over 25,000 episodes managed so far).
We’re giving away the very best we can offer to help patients self-care. The askmyGP search webapp is available from January 2018 to all NHS practices and organisations, no strings attached, it’s free, for everyone and for anything.
ENDS
Note to editors: askmyGP is provided by GP Access Ltd, founded in 2011 with the vision “To transform access to medical care.” We are serving NHS GP practices, CCGs and Health Boards in all four countries of the UK.
Further information:
askmygp.uk Search demonstration at Bramley Demo Surgery bramley.gpsurgery.net
Chief Executive Harry Longman, 01509 816293, mobile 07939 148618
