SXT and Bit Zesty have successfully launched a new patient appointment bookings system across London sexual health clinics.
The team at Bit Zesty recently undertook new work in their ongoing partnership with client SXT, an organisation working to prevent the spread of STIs by enabling patients to easily and anonymously notify their partners of the risk of infection.
SXT and Bit Zesty joined forces to develop the latest addition to the SXT digital services – an appointment bookings module for patients to more easily arrange treatment. Following the success of the partner notification tool which the Bit Zesty team created for SXT, the natural next step was to allow patients, including the notified partners, to book an appointment at a sexual health clinic straight from the SXT website.
Clear project aim
The aim of this project was simple – to encourage users to seek treatment by making appointment-booking simple, via the SXT website. The booking system also helps to ‘close the loop’ between SXT’s partner notification tool and the process of booking an appointment.
SXT’s integrated booking system breaks down one of the major barriers to accessing sexual health care, as patients no longer have to phone their local clinic to arrange an appointment – instead, they can do this rapidly on their smartphone or computer.
The new bookings module in the SXT app is already having a huge impact on user experience and the results are evident at the London clinics which are currently trialling the new system, including UCL North London clinics and Guy’s & St. Thomas’.
By integrating with the existing features of the SXT app – the partner notification tool and the contraception decision tree – the bookings module offers sophisticated recommendations to the user, such as only suggesting relevant appointments at clinics which can treat the specific STI a patient has been exposed to. These features ensure a positive user experience for both patients and clinics, ultimately saving time and resources with a more integrated, user-friendly bookings process and trackable progress in the testing of notified partners.
Tangible results from SXT bookings module
As well as increasing the number of patients making appointments, the SXT bookings tool has also drastically cut down on time-consuming administrative tasks for healthcare workers. One HIV clinician from Guy’s & St. Thomas’ clinics praised the new booking tool, stating that it reduced her time spent scheduling PrEP appointments down to just a few hours, instead of the usual two days.
Within just two weeks of using the SXT tool, Guy’s and St Thomas’ Burrell Street clinic saw significant growth in the numbers of notified partners of diagnosed patients (high-risk patients) attending the clinic – an increase of 36% compared to the time before the bookings module was introduced. This highlights just how valuable this new bookings module will be in increasing the effectiveness of the existing SXT Partner Notification tool.
The SXT bookings module will shortly be rolled out across all three of the sexual health clinics within Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust.
Crucially, the new SXT bookings module created by Bit Zesty is enabling patients to quickly and easily arrange the right appointment for their treatment needs, improving patient access to sexual health services and reducing the spread of easily treatable STIs.
The SXT Partner Notification tool was recently nominated for the British Medical Association’s MEDFASH prize for improving the quality of sexual healthcare. We feel that the addition of the new bookings module makes it an even worthier winner.
