QuickSMS expands NHS presence with Access Rio messaging partnership
QuickSMS, one of the UK’s leading providers of secure messaging services, has entered a partnership with Access Health, part of The Access Group, to become the SMS and RCS Business Messaging provider for its Access Rio software, one of the UK's leading electronic patient record (EPR) systems for community, mental health and child health services.
The agreement extends QuickSMS’s growing role in NHS communications, enabling healthcare organisations using Rio to introduce verified RCS Business Messaging alongside enterprise SMS through a single integrated platform. Used across nearly half of NHS mental health trusts, Rio supports patient communications including appointment reminders, service updates and care messages.
The QuickSMS enterprise messaging platform will integrate directly with Access Rio, allowing healthcare organisations to send RCS messages displaying appointment confirmation buttons, suggested replies, calendar invitations and maps. Where RCS is unavailable, messages automatically fall back to SMS, ensuring every patient continues to receive their official NHS communications.
For community and mental health services, secure and reliable patient communications are critical. Missed appointments are costly and disruptive to continuity of care, while patients receiving messages about their mental health need complete confidence in who is contacting them. As every RCS sender is verified before messages can be delivered, the technology significantly reduces the risk of phishing and spoofed NHS messages while providing a richer patient experience than traditional SMS.
The partnership further strengthens the company's position as a provider of trusted SMS and RCS for Business messaging infrastructure across the NHS.
Joanne Callander, Director of Strategic Accounts at QuickSMS, said:
"Community care and mental health services are exactly where trusted messaging matters most. Verified RCS messaging delivers that assurance through authenticated, interactive messaging while maintaining the universal reach that healthcare depends on.
“We’re incredibly proud to be working alongside Access Health to be helping NHS organisations transition from traditional SMS to trusted, verified messaging that improves patient engagement and confidence.”
Steve Wightman, General Manager, Access Health, added: " Rio supports some of the most sensitive patient communications in the NHS, particularly across mental health and community care, where trust around communications is vital. Our partnership with QuickSMS will enable us to utilise modern messaging capabilities for our customers while ensuring every communication remains secure, compliant and accessible.”
