Orange brings Smartnumbers to UK

French telecoms giant, Orange, has made its entrance into the UK e-health market by introducing a new telephone numbers service that aims to put patients in direct contact with the health professional that they need.

The Smartnumbers service will provide healthcare organisations with a single smart number on the Orange network that has the potential for a series of other numbers to sit behind it.

Michael Lawrence, head of corporate propositions at Orange, told E-Health Insider: “The patient can call the number, which may be set up for a number of areas such as midwifery or out of hours and expect to be put through to the right person.

"If that person is unavailable at that time the next appropriate person will automatically receive the call.”

The company has partnered with Resilient Networks to provide the service for £10 per month over a 12 month contract. It claims the service could help GPs and primary and secondary care trusts to improve the speed at which patients receive care.

Lawrence added: “In midwifery in particular, people are calling a switchboard four or five times and still not getting put through.

"With Smartnumbers, we have seen in some secondary care areas significant improvement in service with 30-50% more people getting access to the right individual at right time.

“This not only saves times and delivers efficiencies in management by routing these calls to the right place but the stress levels of patients who are trying to reach a healthcare professional are also reduced.”

Orange launched its dedicated healthcare division in Europe four years ago but this is the operator’s first activity in the UK.

Lawrence added: “Our focus initially is targeted in building in our core mobile services, looking at things that are reasonably simply applications and delivering significant value from them.”

“The healthcare market is a very interesting place to be at the moment and it is getting very exciting.”

The company says it has already signed a deal with one NHS organisation for the Smartnumbers service but is unable to confirm its name at this stage.

Link: Orange