NHS Direct Online to be moved to Choices

14 May 2008

Parts of NHS Direct Online, the highly successful and popular web-based patient advice and information service, look set to be transferred to rival NHS Choices.

The planned move is not thought to impact NHS Direct’s core nurse-led national telephone advice service, which handles over 8 million calls a year.

NHS Choices, the patient information portal run by Dr Foster on behalf of the DH, is being heavily promoted by ministers as a single hub for patient information and health transactions. Developing the portal is seen as central to the success of the patient choice agenda.

This now appears to include taking over many of the online services currently provided by NHS Direct, together with forming much tighter links with other key patient transactional services including NHS Choose and Book and HealthSpace.

The shift of NHS Direct’s online services is being planned by the DH despite the clear success and popularity of the service among patients. In the nine months to February this year NHS Direct Online’s unique visitors have grown from 1.4m to 2.6m. Traffic to NHS Choices meanwhile is understood to have grown to approximately 2m.

In response to a parliamentary question last month, health minister Ben Bradshaw gave the figures showing NHS Direct’s traffic growth and confirmed it is to much more closely ‘integrated’ with NHS Choices.

The minister said: “Over the next year NHS Direct will be working with colleagues at NHS Choices to provide a more integrated health information service for the public. The aim is to not only make online delivery more efficient and effective for government, but also, more importantly, improve the public's experience of health service provision via the internet, phone or television.”

NHS Direct board papers confirm that respective roles in relation to NHS Choices are being recast, and speak of a ‘core’ set of responsibilities being agreed with ministers. In the future the patient advice service intends to focus its efforts on developing services to support people with longer term conditions.

Asked whether NHS Direct would lose its online information services to NHS Choices, Ronnette Luecraft, commercial director at NHS Direct said the service “will continue to have a strong web presence”.

Luecraft added: “NHS Direct will continue to be a key partner to NHS Choices. We are working closely with the DH team to ensure the best solution for users.”

Jon Hoeksma

Reader's Comments

Merging into a muddle?

15 May 08 09:24

This is unfortunate, but not surprising. The NHS Direct site has had time to mature. One of the reasons that people like it and find it useful is because it provides a limited range of information in a clear and accessible format.

Choices is the opposite. Looking at the interface it's quite obvious that it's trying to do too much for too many people. The lack of focus is probably the result of overambitious aspirations from the politicians, and a lack of clear editorial vision and authority.

It would be a real loss to patients if the clarity and usefulness of NHS Direct is submerged in the muddle that is Choices.

NHS Choices is hitting the mark

15 May 08 15:01

On the contrary, I've been impressed with NHS Choices recently. I have found it surprising that the NHS hasn't in the past had a single public site which covers all of the service, including medical conditions and also catering for 'well-being' like fitness and dieting. NHS Choices hasn't been going for long but it already has some well developed services and the design is much easier to use than it was a year ago. I don't understand why the previous comment says it shouldn't try to 'cater for everyone' - surely this is precisely what an NHS site should be doing.

Such a waste

15 May 08 16:02

Anybody who actually needs to use a website like NHSDirect, will be losing out on a terrible decision here. NHS Choices website is appalling. No clarity. Half of their information is "borrowed" from NHS Direct. I really have no idea why someone came up with such an idiotic idea.

Choices is the best health site

16 May 08 07:53

I review websites for a living and I'm often looking at health sites. NHS Direct's site has useful information but it is far too vague and lacking in enough detail for users who only want to find out something online. Choices has much more information and caters for the variety of content people will be looking for when they research health. NHS Direct's site is obviously to support its phone service but Choices is just for online information. Users these days are not concerned about the clarity of a site, they just want the information and if they don't then have to go to another site to find more, then a site is succesful. The people who run NHS Choices obviously are looking to cover the whole range of medical and health issues and I think in the end it will be the most succesful because of this.

Joined up?

16 May 08 10:23

How confusing is it for the public to have both Choices and Direct online? Why would there be two sites with such similar aims being funded from the public purse? Surely it makes perfect sense that the two should join together. This, of course, needs to be done with great attention to making it usable but it must be seen as a triumph of common sense.

Web strategies

16 May 08 11:06

I think some of the above posts are confusing having a single website with having a single web strategy. If you look at the most successful and well used website, (Google, Facebook etc) they fulfill a relatively narrow range of functions really well - they are very clear about what they do and who they do it for.

There is no reason that the DH / NHS couldn't support a number of sites that focus on different aspects of what people want to do, whether that's finding information or social networking in health. They just need to be bound together by a single strategy. I'm sure it's possible to do this on a single web domain too, but it's difficult if you have lots of diverse functions fighting for prominence.

You still need the coherent strategy and that's the bit the DH usually fails to deliver - hence Choices.

Confusion during transition

23 May 08 12:06

There is considerable overlap in NHS Choivces and the long-established NHS Direct so some sort of synergy review should occur - but why take things away from NHS Direct (a well-recognised brand) ? One might cynically suggest that NHSCFH cannot 'control' NHS Direct so this move could bring the successful merged offerring nearer to the portfolio of NHSCFH so it (and the Dr Foster contract) can claim successes in a similar manner to the absorption of PACS and QMAS as demonstrations of positive outcomes and committment in the field were spun (sorry - identified!!!!)

Lost in transition

23 May 08 14:29

Interesting thesis, but I don't think this is the case. The impetus behind absorbing the NHS Direct website into Choices is coming from the DH and not CFH. After all, it was the DH that took the old NHS.uk service away from CFH in order to create Choices (I think it was carried out in a dark basement, Frankenstein-style).

It's more likely that it's part of the larger cross-governmental policy of reducing the number of websites - as well as a cynical attempt to remove any competition to the minster's new toy.

On the other hand, the shifting of responsibility for Choices from the DH to CFH may be an attempt to put some proper governance around the project - something that the DH seems to have struggled with if the rumours about cost control are true.