One platform for nine NHS Stop Smoking Services in England
We built and run the case-management platform behind nine NHS Stop Smoking Services: a staff web admin, an iPhone and Android app, booking, product distribution, messaging and statutory reporting, all on one database.
The challenge
A quit attempt is a 12-week journey with a long tail. Every step has to be recorded, because every step is reported.
Each person needs an assessment, regular appointments, stop-smoking products, check-ins between visits, and follow-ups over the following year. Commissioners need regular returns, built from all of it.
Across several local services, that work had been split between separate tools, spreadsheets and paper: bookings in one place, stock in another, outcomes pieced together by hand at the end of each quarter.
The brief was one platform for all of it: one record per person, the right access for each role in each service, and reports that come straight from the work people already do.
A quit attempt, end to end.
Twelve weeks, two follow-ups and a quarterly return. Each bar is a part of the platform, shown in the weeks it does its job.
A referral arrives
From a GP, a pharmacy or the person themselves, singly or in a bulk upload. Before anyone books, it is checked for duplicates, so the same person isn’t opened twice.
Referrals · duplicate detection
First appointment
Booked into the right clinic and confirmed by text.
Booking · SMS
Quit date and products
The practitioner records the assessment and sets a quit date. Patches, spray or a vape go out by home delivery, from a practitioner’s briefcase or as a pharmacy voucher, through an approval step.
Case record · product distribution
Support between appointments
In the app: a personal quit plan, a smoke-free counter, money saved, a health timeline and a daily check-in. A reported slip alerts the keyworker, and chat with the service team is one tap away.
Client app · check-ins
The four-week quit
The outcome is recorded and verified where possible, straight onto the person’s record.
Outcomes
Questionnaires
Scheduled questionnaires go out during the programme. Answers land on the record, not in a spreadsheet.
Questionnaires
End of the programme
The 12-week outcome is recorded. A missed milestone is marked lost to follow-up, so nobody quietly drops out of the figures.
Outcomes
Long-term follow-up
Follow-up texts go out at 26 and 52 weeks. Replies land on the record for staff to confirm. The returns come straight from the records.
Two-way SMS · reporting
What we built
Four of the staff screens, recreated with sample data. The people, places and numbers are invented; the workflows are the real ones.
The caseload
Each practitioner sees their own clients, scoped to their service: who is due, who has slipped and who needs following up.
Possible duplicates are flagged before a second record is opened, and merged in one step.
| Client | Stage | Quit date | Next | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amira Khan | Week 3 | 2 Oct | Thu 10:30 · clinic | On track |
| Priya Shah | Week 2 | 9 Oct | Check-in missed | Slip flagged |
| Daniel Price | Week 5 | 18 Sep | Questionnaire due | Due |
| Grace Okafor | Referral | Not set | Call back today | New |
| Tom Walsh | Week 11 | 31 Jul | 12-week outcome | Due |
Appointment booking
Clinic diaries change in one edit, not a rebuilt calendar, and the person gets a reminder.
- 09:00Daniel Price
- 09:20Group session (register)
- 10:00Free
- 10:20Amira Khan
- 10:40Free
- 11:00Tom Walsh
- 11:30Break
- 11:45Free
Booking
Amira Khan · 10:20Follow-up, week 3. Riverside Health Centre, room 2.
- Reminder SMS: Wednesday 10:20
- Added to her record
- Not attended? Marked automatically, with an SMS
Walk-in clinic 13:00–15:00 · 3 of 6 places taken
Stock order approval
Nicotine replacement and vapes are medical products, so every order is approved and every unit is recorded.
A recall finds every client who received it.
- Client
- Amira Khan · week 3
- Requested by
- R. Patel, practitioner
- Deliver to
- Home address on record
| Product | Qty | Batch | Expires |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nicotine patch 21mg | 14 | L2309 | Mar 2027 |
| Mouth spray 1mg | 1 | S1144 | Nov 2026 |
On approval: stock is updated and traceable
The report list
Statutory and commissioner returns, built straight from the records. Pick a period and a service, then export.
Nobody pieces the figures together by hand.
- Monthly summaryBy serviceExcelRun
- Service overviewHeadline figuresPDFRun
- Management packFor the boardWordRun
- ExportsRecords for analysisCSVRun
Modules and scale. One database underneath.
The staff admin and the client app share one database, so a check-in on a phone and a note in the clinic land on the same record.
- 9NHS Stop Smoking Services
- 150,000+client records
- 500+staff
- 10app languages
Results in use: the platform holds over 150,000 client records, is used by 500+ staff and handles hundreds of appointments a day. We put the value it delivered at over £715,000 in just under 12 months. These are our operational figures, not numbers read from the code.
Case management
One record per person: a journey timeline, notes, consents, tasks and transfers between services, with clinical questionnaires scored on the record.
Referrals and triage
Referral intake with quality checks and bulk upload. Possible duplicates are caught before a second record is opened, and merged in one step.
Booking
Clinics and venues, walk-ins, group sessions and callbacks. Missed appointments are marked and followed up automatically.
Medical product distribution
Several ways to supply stop-smoking products, from home delivery to pharmacy vouchers, with approval and batch tracking so every unit can be traced.
Messaging
SMS, email, push notifications and real-time chat, with two-way replies. Consent is checked before every send.
Client app
iPhone and Android. Secure sign-in, a personal quit plan, progress tracking, check-ins, a journal, articles and video, chat with the service team, and booking.
Reporting
Statutory and commissioner reporting built straight from the records, live dashboards for managers, and exports to Excel, PDF and Word.
Access and governance
Single sign-on with role-based access scoped to each local service. Every change to a record is logged.
How we engineer and run it
Health data, nine services and hundreds of appointments a day leave no room for a fragile release. This is how it is built, tested and watched.
Architecture
One server and one database behind the staff admin and the app. Access is scoped to each local service, so one service never sees another’s clients.
Testing
Automated tests across the server, the staff app and the mobile app, with the business rules that matter most tested on their own.
Delivery
Every change is type-checked and tested before it is merged, and every database change is reviewed before it touches live data. Development, staging and production are kept separate.
Security
Independently penetration tested. Single sign-on with role-based access, and consent checks before every message.
Monitoring
Errors and performance are tracked on every part, with health checks that alert the team before users notice.
Help for staff
An assistant that answers staff questions from an approved knowledge base only. No client data is sent to the model.
Where it’s going
The platform is designed to extend to 14 further lifestyle programmes, built on the same foundations.
Stop smoking is live today. The other programmes are on the roadmap, set out in planning documents. Each one would reuse the records, booking, messaging and reporting already in place, rather than starting again.
In development in the app
Built on a branch and not yet switched on:
- an AI quit coach with safety checks that alert the practitioner;
- support that responds to how someone is doing;
- an AI intake interview.
- Stop smokingLive
- Adult weight managementPlanned
- Low calorie dietPlanned
- Family weight managementPlanned
- Falls preventionPlanned
- Physical activityPlanned
- NHS Health ChecksPlanned
- Alcohol reductionPlanned
- Mental wellbeingPlanned
- Psychological therapyPlanned
- MaternityPlanned
- Cancer prehabilitationPlanned
- Healthy lifestylesPlanned
- Tier 1 eventsPlanned
- Healthy workplacePlanned
Need a platform like this?
We can build one for your organisation: the same architecture and the same team, configured for your services, your branding and your integrations.
It isn’t a boxed product with your logo on top. Some rules are specific to stop smoking, and your services will have their own. What carries over is the hard part: an architecture that has already been through a penetration test, statutory reporting and daily use by hundreds of staff.
Public health teams, community health providers, charities and anyone running case-managed services can start with a free consultation. You get a fixed quote in stages.
- Multi-service scopingMany local services on one platform, each seeing only its own clients.
- SSO with rolesYour organisation’s single sign-on, with roles for every job in the service.
- Statutory reportingReturns and finance reports built from the records, not by hand.
- Stock distributionOrders, approvals and a full record of anything you hand out.
- Messaging with safeguardsTwo-way SMS, email, push and chat, with a consent check before every send.
- An app on the same databaseiPhone and Android, sharing one record with your staff.
- Penetration testedBuilt to pass an independent test, and it has.
Tell us about the services you run.
A free consultation with the team that built and runs this platform, then a fixed quote in stages.