[EBO] more than rose to the challenge. It felt like a true development partnership with staff from both EBO and BCU forming a cohesive team
The Intelligent Patient Portal for Mental Health & Community Trusts
Built with patients for patients, this powerful solution offers personalised, empathetic guidance throughout the patient’s healthcare journey.
Join EBO's Roundtable on 24th June 2025
AI-powered Patient Portals for Mental Health & Community
As a long-standing partner of The Access Group, EBO has already helped 12 NHS Trusts across the UK deploy our Virtual Assistant solution — tailored specifically for Rio customers. Join us on 24 June 2025 for an exclusive, user-led roundtable built specifically for Rio-users — focused on shaping the future of patient portals.
How EBO’s Solution is delivered:
EBO’s Intelligent Patient Portal supports Mental Health and Community Trusts aiming to enhance patient experiences and improve patient engagement. Using advanced natural language processing (NLP), it enhances your portal with human-like patient interactions. This is more than a chatbot—it’s a powerful tool offering personalised, empathetic guidance throughout the patient’s healthcare journey.
“Placing the person at the heart of the service and in control of their care is essential.”
As the NHS England Director formerly responsible for the national Patient Portal programme, Richard Samuel now advises the EBO Intelligent Patient Portal initiative.
- Richard Samuel, Director of Healthcare Strategy, EBO and Former NHS England Director and NHS Chief Executive
Patient Portals as Pillars of the NHS 10-Year Health Plan
The focus of patient engagement portals from 2022 was primarily tactical and transactional, aiming to reduce long waits in elective care and boost productivity through technical functionality. Although these needs persist, the future of portals is transformational—becoming a core enabler of the 10-year plan.
Over the next five years, a third of all NHS interactions will be delivered digitally, necessitating a significant upgrade in portal capabilities. These portals must offer an exceptional user experience that is equitable, inclusive, and personalised. They need to empower patients by providing the knowledge, skills, and capabilities to make informed decisions, practice self-care, and manage their healthcare journeys. Ultimately, healthcare should seamlessly integrate into people’s daily lives, rather than the other way around.
Empathy in Digital Form
“AI is no longer just about speed or scale. It’s about sensitivity. That’s especially critical in mental health, where trust and confidence are often lower to begin with”, Richard Samuel, Healthcare Strategy Director, EBO.
“Digital empathy,” is a principle central to EBO’s Intelligent Patient Portal, which uses AI and sentiment analysis to create emotionally attuned, human-like interactions.
“Years ago, all a chatbot could do was offer canned replies. But now, with AI and natural language processing, we can track sentiment, recognise frustration, adapt the tone of conversation and even route someone to a human being if it’s clear a patient is in distress” says Richard.
This isn’t just about replicating a human conversation. It’s about anticipating need, de-escalating emotion, and creating a space that feels safe—even when it’s digital.
What makes EBO's portal different is its inclusivity by design. It integrates sentiment analysis, AI-driven conversation, and even synthetic voice capabilities, reducing barriers for those with limited literacy or physical access to technology.
Benefits
Discover the realisable benefits of EBO’s Patient Engagement Solution:
Support mental health service users with accessible, human-like interactions.
EBO’s Intelligent Patient Portal supports mental health service users with stigma-sensitive conversational flow, fostering inclusion, trust, and accessible communication across complex care pathways. It empowers both patients and carers through natural, human-like conversations, risk-aware triage, and mobile-first engagement – enhancing continuity of care without barriers.
A patient’s companion.
EBO’s Intelligent Patient Portal is not just a tool. It’s a companion that engages with pateints via two-way natural conversation – available 24/7 in any language. It is tuned to meet patients where they are, emotionally and cognitively.
Speak your Patient’s Language
Thanks to its unique Natural Language Processing and language recognition, EBO’s IPP replaces one-way, closed-question digital forms and multiple choice answers with two-way natural communication that is indistinguishable from human conversation – in any channel of choice!
Restoring Empathy
EBO’s IPP can converse with patients intelligently and with empathy – understanding their intents, emotions, tone and providing appropriate accurate responses.
Making patients feel seen, heard and spoken to
Activation can only take place through human-centred conversations. With EBO patients feel “spoken to”, not “processed”: making them more likely to stay the course. Backed by behavioural science, EBO’s portal increases the proportion of patients who move from “digital access” to “digital action”.
A Patient Portal with Memory
EBO’s context awareness and NLP abilities allows the IPP to keep track of patient’s data and personalise conversations. Patients can hop from one pathway to another without needing to start all over again or give any context.
Enabling Voice & Choice
EBO’s IPP will have the ability to hear, and respond to patient’s voice inputs, making patient communication easy, simple and accessible. Patients can simply speak to Intelligent Patient Portal and the Virtual Assistant will respond immediately.
Patient Support and Guidance
EBO’s IPP offers clinical workflow support and can reach out to patients on different pathways, be it self-assessment, appointment management, e-consent or waiting list validation.
Built with Behavioural Science
EBO has embedded behavioural psychology directly into its conversational AI, in collaboration with Influence At Work, one of the world’s leading behavioural science hubs. The result? Every message is designed to nudge the right outcome: whether it’s reducing DNAs, encouraging health screenings, or increasing trust in digital communications. This is vital for population health and has measurable impact on system throughput.
Continuously Improving Patient Adoption
The IPP uses machine learning and language recognition to continuously improve, adapting to complex tasks and patient needs. EBO’s specialist dialogue consultants ensure its effectiveness through ongoing monitoring.
Multilingual Functionality
From English to Spanish to Greek and Arabic, patients can interact with the IPP in any language, on any channel, at any point in time. They can even choose to communicate to the IPP using text or voice.
Measure the Pulse of your Patients
EBO’s sentiment analysis provides management with a new level of Business Intelligence and insight on a patient’s health. It can tell you how patients feel (self assessment) and how they think (PROM, PREMS) – all displayed on a visual dashboard.
Improve Patient Access via the NHS App
Access is about removing friction NOT adding features. EBO lowers the threshold for digital adoption by creating intuitive, conversational entry points; especially critical for patients with low digital literacy or high anxiety. We widen entry leads to broader NHS App relevance; not just for the digitally fluent.
By applying behavioural science, EBO ensures patients feel both safe and understood, shifting from functional tools to systems built for confidence and care.
Capabilities & Solutions
From assessments and appointment management to waiting list validation and bidirectional messaging, EBO’s Intelligent Patient Portal for Mental Health & Community Trusts covers a range of solutions to streamline operations, enhance patient engagement and improve access and inclusivity.
Appointment Management
Empower patients to take full control of their appointments through a secure, AI-powered interface that supports confirmation, cancellation, and rescheduling – in real time. The solution reduces missed appointments, improves patient preparedness, and alleviates administrative burden, while complying with NHS appointment data and communication standards.
This capability is live in several NHS Trusts and has demonstrated measurable improvements in engagement and efficiency.
Communication Hub
EBO’s portal integrates a Communications & Notifications Hub that allows Trusts to deliver automated, intelligent, and timely two-way communication to patients at every stage of their care journey.
Whether it’s sending a clinic letter, reminding patients of an upcoming diagnostic test, or prompting a digital response to a specific request, the Hub ensures the right message reaches the right patient at the right time reducing inbound traffic and boosting care compliance.
Waiting List Validation
Validate patient waiting lists and optimise patient interactions and outcomes at the same time. This solution delivers proactive engagement at scale, ensuring patients are still clinically appropriate for treatment while streamlining hospital workflows.
Unlike point solutions or manual call-centre approaches, EBO’s portal is fully AI-automated, enabling two-way, patient-led validation journeys with natural language understanding. It integrates with PAS/EPR systems and adheres to NHS data security protocols.
Bi-directional Messaging
EBO’s e-Correspondence solution offers Trusts a seamless and secure way to communicate with patients, whether its notifying them of their appointments or the new addition of documents to their medical records.
For healthcare providers, the e-Correspondence module significantly reduces costs associated with sending letters and documents, including postage and printing expenses. Additionally, by embracing a digital-first approach, hospitals can minimise their environmental impact and promote sustainability.
Document Access
Provide patients access to their documents within the EPR, or upload to the medical record. The specific document type can be configured to either be distributed to patients in an automated process or kept internal. Immediately notify patients when a new document has been uploaded.
This solution can also be enhanced to link with a hybrid mail provider. In this case, the portal would inform the provider not to send the document to the patient once accessed. if not accessed within (e.g.) 24 hours, the physical provider will send the document.
Watch the portal in action
How it works
Navigate the Talking Therapies Pathway
Find out how Sally, EBO’s Virtual Assistant, supports patients like Harry—a 58-year-old who, after his marriage ended and losing his job, has struggled to open up about his feelings. Sally reaches out to Harry automatically, validates his appointment, provides him with relevant information, and maintains direct communication with him over the next three months. View the pathway infographic here.
Winning Clients’ Trust
Here are a few words from our clients on their experience with our solution.
Danielle Edwards
- Head of Digital Transformation
- Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board
If a solution like EBO is implemented across the NHS, it can revolutionise access to maternity care for the majority of service users. The point is to release capacity in Health systems by using innovation and technology that supports that.
Charlotte Clayton
- Clinical Academic Doctoral Midwife
- RM Princess Anne Hospital, University Hospital Southampton
The experience of working with EBO on our Virtual Assistant has been very positive. EBO and Servelec listened to our feedback and helped design AI solutions that benefit our patients by providing an alternative way they interact with the trust.
James Mariott
- Digital Change Manager
- Somerset NHS Foundation Trust
I think where we really found the stress is on the admin. A lot of our service users are calling us, which means that our lines are continuously busy and admins miss some of the calls, as they are on the phone with another service user at the time. It means that people are trying to get in contact till the late evening when the services are closed. It really opened up our eyes to see that there are other ways our clients can communicate with us and there are other ways that we can communicate with the clients. It actually works for them.
Shona Richards
- Digital Transformation Project Manager
- East London NHS Foundation Trust
EBO is a trusted partner of Microsoft, because a lot of what we see with thousands of customers that we work around the world is very much aligned with EBO’s mission and vision. They empower caregivers; they empower administrative staff, and they empower patients to have better access to information. 84% of Healthcare Executives believe that AI will revolutionise the way we obtain information.
Ruthy Kaidar
- Director, Healthcare Industry Sector
- Microsoft
We have a growing backlog and we have patients whose conditions are just getting worse as their appointments are delayed. We have people in the community who cannot even get their first appointment, they cannot get diagnosed and they cannot receive early treatment. Covid has accelerated our adoption of virtual appointments and remote patient monitoring, so there is some efficiency gained there.
Jenny Chong
- Associate Non-executive Director
- Medway NHS Foundation Trust
It is indeed a pleasure to work hand-in-hand with EBO in developing our AI profile and competence. Apart from providing excellent technical expertise, EBO has consistently supported, trained, and maintained a close relationship with all of our team whilst overseeing the development, deployment, and successful marketing of our AI platform. Such support is unique and provides us with the confidence and motivation to further develop this exciting Artificial Intelligence revolution together with EBO, and be able to provide a holistic and efficient experience to our clients.
Jean Claude Muscat
- CEO
- Saint James Hospital
Our booking officers absolutely love our Virtual Assistant Alex, since it does the legwork and they can focus on the patient. Over the last six months, Alex has helped save 24 hours of staff time every week. Our callers come from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, so we worked with our communication to make sure Alex understands all our patients and the different ways they communicate.
Kim Hale
- Digital Change Lead
- Somerset NHS Foundation Trust
“Working with EBO is like ‘a breath of fresh air’. They have a deep-seated ‘can-do’ ethos to delivering successful solutions and our collaboration functions as a true partnership. The EBO Virtual Assistant is a new technology for us with great potential as it integrates directly with our Electronic Patient Record. We initiated a pilot with EBO on e-Consent and are already lined up for rolling out pre-assessment and appointment modules.¨
Andy l’Anson
- IT Programme Manager
- Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust
