Part of Digital pathways tools guidance 2025/26
Annex A: national specified capabilities to support digital pathways
National specified capabilities to support digital pathways
| Care navigation | Supports health or care professionals to appropriately process and respond to online patient/service user consultations. A pre configured care navigation workflow is used. |
| Online consultations and online patient/service user requests reporting |
Enables reporting and analysis. Uses online consultations and online patient/service user request data items to support:
|
| Online patient/service user request | Allows patients/service users to make specific types of clinical/non-clinical requests online to their healthcare organisation. |
| Online patient/service user consultation | Allows patients/service users to request and receive support relating to healthcare concerns online. |
Some tools may also offer additional, enhanced capabilities, including:
| Communication management | Supports the delivery of two way patient communications. |
| Cross organisation appointment booking | Enables appointments for patients/service users to be booked by health or care professionals across organisational boundaries. |
| Prescription ordering - citizen | Enables patients to request for a repeat medication to be issued online. |
| Video consultation | Allows health/care professionals to conduct secure live remote video consultations. This can be with individual or groups of patients/service users. |
| View record - citizen | Enables patients to view content from their electronic patient record (EPR) online. |
Note:
Integrated care boards must engage with the NHS England national commercial and procurement hub to ensure that only products meeting the above required capabilities are in place and purchased.
Demand and capacity planning tools
Demand and capacity planning tools (DCPT) will allow health or care organisations to gain a greater understanding of their own data and performance to enable more informed planning.
They are expected to offer the following capabilities:
| Access preconfigured dashboards | Enables health/care professionals to access preconfigured dashboards provided by suppliers. They are based on nationally-defined criteria. They use data from core clinical solutions and other supporting solutions. |
| Manage custom dashboards | Enables health/care professionals to access, manage and share custom dashboards. The dashboards use data from core clinical solutions and other supporting solutions. |
| Data management | Allows health/care professionals to configure how consumed data is mapped. This includes SNOMED CT codes. This ensures the data can be most effectively used by the dashboards. |
Note:
Integrated care boards must engage with the NHS England national commercial and procurement hub to ensure that only products meeting the above required capabilities are in place and purchased.
Last edited: 30 July 2025 3:46 pm