Frequently Asked Questions

All adults over the age of 18 and living in England can join with the Research for the Future programme.

No reply can be sent to the SMS. The sender will be titled: NHSNo-Reply.

Patients will receive one of the below Text Message templates:

[First Name] Take part in NHS research to help discover ways to prevent & treat illness. Register https://mygp.care/RFTF Thanks [Practice Name]

No – the message wording is consistent for all and no changes will be possible however, if you have suggestions on how the wording could be improved please let us know.

There is absolutely no charge for the service as it is a fully funded project. The practice does not incur any charge for text messaging or set up.

This service does not affect any of your current messaging services and runs independently to this.

No - Once you have submitted consent, we can begin messaging the eligible patients.

Yes. Nothing will change for the practice but consent needs to be given for this progamme.

As there is no “accreditation” of GDPR compliance, we can only advise that we have worked with our legal specialists, Data Protection Officer, and NHS England to ensure that iPLATO Healthcare are 100% GDPR compliant in line with legislation.

iPLATO meets all requirements for Data Protection and DS&P (Information Governance) and is trusted by customers across the UK to handle, securely 21.5 million clients.

It is not necessary to collect express consent from patients to communicate with them. GDPR does not regulate communication with patients, instead it is about the legal basis to process an individual’s data and their rights. In the healthcare space, providers use their “public task” legal basis to process patient data for the provision of healthcare. Patients can then express their preferences not to be communicated via particular means and this is normally common practice in surgeries.

For more on how GDPR affects patient messaging in the healthcare industry: https://mailchi.mp/8dda68c0a4ac/countdown-to-gdpr-4-things-you-need-to-know