Join us for a free day of learning, workshops, and fact-finding about the latest Booking and Referral Standard (BaRS). Intended as a precursor to a hackathon, we will be joining forces with the BaRS team at NHS Digital to offer a day of insights into the BaRS and how it is seeking to bring to life a standardised “any-to-any” booking and referral vision. This Learnathon will be followed up by an opportunity to be part of a Booking and Referral Standard hackathon on 4 & 5 May, which we intend to make an in-person event (location and dates TBC).

BACKGROUND

The BaRS programme aims to drive the next generation of digital booking and referral services. It will allow any referrer to make a referral and/or booking into any healthcare provider (“Any-to-Any”), across a broad range of virtual and physical appointments throughout the entire pathway (“End-to-End”). This engages and empowers the patient to better understand, navigate and influence their pathways of care (“Empowered Patient”).

BaRS focuses on the priorities of:

• elective recovery - by diverting demand away from secondary care, with increased use of digital triage services also by reducing unnecessary referrals and follow-ups, and reduce the administration burden on clinicians; and

• Integrated Care System (ICS) development - by providing the booking infrastructure to support networking of services across primary care. Joint access to Directories of Service (DoS) will improve the speed and quality of referrals; and

• the development of the long-term strategy and ecosystem, empowering patients to take greater control over their health and well-being, with improved visibility and choice over pathways.

The NHS has a vision of a 'fully operational any-to-any booking, referral and appointment management ecosystem in health and social care, that is efficient, effective and scalable’, aligned to the Secretary of State’s intent to provide services that are driven by user needs, with inclusive access to all, using technologies that are interoperable and open. The Booking and Referral Standards team sits within the e-RS Evolve Programme and is developing a Bookings and Referral Standard that can be used across the various sectors and will promote adoption and support First of Type implementation of the standard, and the use of the API’s.

THEMES

The five themes for the day will address the following:

• Introduce the policy and business benefit of the Booking and Referral Standard (BaRS)
• Introduce the BaRS concept, where we are in the development lifecycle and outline the next steps
• Outline the Technical approach we’ve used to underpin the standard
• Conduct a technical workshop to outline our standard and gather industry feedback
• Introduce the purpose and ambition for the upcoming Hackathon

A full agenda for the day will be confirmed shortly. Sessions will be hosted by leaders representing a range of perspectives, including policy, suppliers, developers and the more technical sessions will invite participation from the delegates to help inform our progress towards the BaRS vision.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND

Whether you are a software developer keen to test and/or connect new and existing solutions, a project lead wishing to deepen your understanding of current delivery plans for BaRS, or a clinician curious to get involved and help steer the development and ensure the 'real-world' views are considered then this event is for you and anyone else wishing to explore how a new standard could be used to support more connected, effective patient care.

PREPARATION

In keeping with INTEROPen values, all interested parties are invited to take part in planning calls via Zoom to help shape the scope and agenda for the hackathon, and to provide participants with the information to commence their hack plans.

Planning calls for the Learnathon and Hackathon are taking place every Monday at 8.30 am. Further details can be found on Ryver*, where conversations, technical preparations, and updates relating to this event are shared be shared in the Bookings and Referrals Learn & Hackathon Forum.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Team INTEROPen

*Ryver is the INTEROPen community's collaboration platform. To access Ryver, you will need to be a member of INTEROPen (to ensure GDPR compliance). To become a member, please complete the online joining form at www.interopen.org/join