Helping eConsult scale its digital health offer

With Opencast support, eConsult was able to improve its processes - and in turn help GP practices offer easier consultations to their patients. It also helped to ease pressures on GPs hours by introducing greater efficiency into the system.

The change also enabled eConsult’s management, development team and UX team to have clear requirements and expectations. We helped improve the resilience and stability of the eConsult platform through work on the cache service. This ensured heavier loads to improve performance for peak times between 8am and 10am. 

There was no unplanned downtime over the key few months of the pandemic as lockdown changed how NHS general practice handled care.

The eConsult business more than doubled the number of practices using its platform during the first few weeks of the pandemic. Monthly online consultations went up tenfold from 120,000 in February 2020 to 1.2m a year later.

The input of the Opencast team was key to eConsult’s success in managing this significant scale up – and we have supported the business during since during further periods of development.

Throughout Opencast's work, our presence and processes have been key to eConsult delivering services that work for patients in both GP and in its new product in emergency settings.