Forward Clinical Limited

Pando - Clinical Messenger

Pando by Forward Clinical Ltd offers secure communication solutions for healthcare teams to collaborate within/across organisations.

Trusted by +50,000 healthcare professionals, Pando incorporates best-in-class features that help professionals share clinical information securely, save time, and make better decisions.

Available for mobile/desktop use.
Proven to replace WhatsApp and Pagers.

Features

• Secure Instant Messaging: 1:1, Team, Forums
• Secure Image Capture, Gallery, Sharing and Export
• Collaborative Workflow and Task Management
• File Sharing
• Globalised Directories (Organisation, Region)
• Availability Status, for customised notifications control
• Optional device provision and Mobile Device Management (MDM)
• Admin Control: On/Offboarding, Analytics/Reports, Data Control, Broadcast Messaging
• Pager+: Pando's Pager Replacement platform
• Ask Advice: Pando's Advice and Guidance platform

Benefits

• £6.9 million saving per NHS Trust over 5 years
• Secure, efficient and accountable sharing of clinical information
• Easy to see when messages are delivered and read
• Data control and access requirements met under GDPR
• Mobile Device Management (MDM) offers device oversight and control
• Improved staff satisfaction at work, with reduced workflow disruption
• Reduced overtime/locum costs through better use of workforce
• Improved patient services via improved flow and early escalation
• Replacement of Pager activity/contracts via Pager+
• Reduced patient referral volume via Ask Advice

£2 to £10 a user a month

• Education pricing available
• Free trial available

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at philip@hellopando.com. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 12

Service ID

557366468998548

Contact

Philip Mundy
02037510443
philip@hellopando.com

Service scope

• Software add-on or extension: Yes, but can also be used as a standalone service
• What software services is the service an extension to: Pando Control integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Teams
• Cloud deployment model: Public cloud
• Service constraints: None
• System requirements:
  • Mobile devices operating on Android or iOS
  • Desktop device with modern web browser

User support

• Email or online ticketing support: Email or online ticketing
• Support response times: Pando's average time to first response is less than 10 minutes.
• User can manage status and priority of support tickets: No
• Phone support: Yes
• Phone support availability: 9 to 5 (UK time), 7 days a week
• Web chat support: Web chat
• Web chat support availability: 9 to 5 (UK time), 7 days a week
• Web chat support accessibility standard: WCAG 2.1 A
• Web chat accessibility testing: Screen reader support: the Messenger is accessible via screen readers; ; Keyboard navigation: every component of the Messenger can be accessed using a keyboard without requiring a mouse or trackpad; ; Colour contrast: all text in the web Messenger uses colours with sufficient contrast to be clearly visible
• Onsite support: Yes, at extra cost
• Support levels: *PandoMessenger Support*; Pando Self-Serve Help Centre, Automated FAQ support for all users, How-to articles for all users, Instructional how-to videos via YouTube, 24/7 user feedback.; ; *PandoControl Support*; PandoMessenger Support PLUS: Webinar-style training video for team leads, Weekly calls during the first 6 weeks of launch, On-demand Success team, Tailored product onboarding support, Ongoing product consultation, Full SLA
• Support available to third parties: Yes

Onboarding and offboarding

• Getting started: Pando provides training materials to support the onboarding process and ensure users can use the functions of the application in an efficient, compliant, and accessible way. ; ; We aim to meet the needs of users with a range of learning styles and preferences whilst taking into consideration accessibility standards.; ; A carousel-style tutorial presented in-app to new users provides an overview of Pando's main features.; ; The support portal on the Pando website is available 24x7x365 and contains on-demand knowledge articles which cover the following areas: getting started, features, security, implementation and troubleshooting.; ; We work in tandem with organisations to develop specific learning materials that incorporate local Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), Information Governance guidelines and other other guidance. ; ; Workshops are encouraged for new teams to make the best use of Pando in the context of their job role. We encourage participants to learn from and motivate each other and can provide guides to facilitate this style of workshop.; ; Our face-to-face training can be performed either one to one or in a group setting. We encourage organisations to appoint Pando champions to lead the spread of knowledge through their teams/departments.
• Service documentation: Yes
• Documentation formats: PDF
• End-of-contract data extraction: Pando Control offers data control and access for the organisation. Data can be extracted at the end of the contract.
• End-of-contract process: Data extraction at the end of the contract is included. At contract end, administrators lose access to Pando Control. Users can continue to make use of the free tier of Pando.

Using the service

• Web browser interface: Yes
• Supported browsers:
  • Microsoft Edge
  • Firefox
  • Chrome
  • Safari 9+
• Application to install: Yes
• Compatible operating systems:
  • Android
  • IOS
• Designed for use on mobile devices: Yes
• Differences between the mobile and desktop service: The service has been designed to be "Mobile First"; user-facing services are fully available from mobile devices. The exception is administrator access, which is only via web app (desktop).
• Service interface: Yes
• Description of service interface: Pando uses CloudTrail/GuardDuty as a service to enable automatic governance, compliance, and auditing of hosted data. We log, continuously monitor, and retain account activity related to all actions across our infrastructure. This event history simplifies security analysis, resource change tracking, and troubleshooting. There is also a capability to detect unusual activity, to simplify operational analysis and troubleshooting. This service allows us to fulfil audit requests and enables full reporting of Subject Access Requests or clinical safety incidents. The audit trail is immutable, and only available to authorised users with elevated privileges via a secure administrative Control Centre.
• Accessibility standards: WCAG 2.1 A
• Accessibility testing: Screen reader support: the Messenger is accessible via screen readers;; Keyboard navigation: every component of the Messenger can be accessed using a keyboard without requiring a mouse or trackpad;; Colour contrast: all text in the web Messenger uses colours with sufficient contrast to be clearly visible
• API: Yes
• What users can and can't do using the API: Access to the Pando API is available as required through our Implementation services. Please contact for more details and access to test environments.
• API documentation: Yes
• API documentation formats: Open API (also known as Swagger)
• API sandbox or test environment: No
• Customisation available: Yes
• Description of customisation: User profile details are customised as needed.; In App information fields such as ward lists for NHS trusts can be tailored to the organisation's needs. ; Bespoke integrations available. ; Features (e.g. task management, lists, pager+) can be activated or deactivated as needed by the organisation, to avoid overlap with existing clinical systems.

Scaling

• Independence of resources: All component parts of the service are designed in a cloud-native manner. Elastic provisioning is used, enabling automatic scaling to handle increases and decreases in load.; ; Scalability of the service has been proven during the COVID-19 outbreak, handling 5x normal traffic with no performance degradation.

Analytics

• Service usage metrics: Yes
• Metrics types: A wide range of operational use data is provided in the administrative Control Centre, alongside detailed reports made available on request.; Data includes: ; - Staff user numbers; - Message activity and type (per user/team/department); - Image activity (per user/team/department); - Task activity (per user/team/department); - User feedback (qualitative and NPS); - Identification of users struggling to onboard who require additional assistance
• Reporting types:
  • Real-time dashboards
  • Regular reports
  • Reports on request

Resellers

• Supplier type: Not a reseller

Staff security

• Staff security clearance: Other security clearance
• Government security clearance: Up to Security Clearance (SC)

Asset protection

• Knowledge of data storage and processing locations: Yes
• Data storage and processing locations: United Kingdom
• User control over data storage and processing locations: No
• Datacentre security standards: Managed by a third party
• Penetration testing frequency: At least once a year
• Penetration testing approach: ‘IT Health Check’ performed by a Tigerscheme qualified provider or a CREST-approved service provider
• Protecting data at rest:
  • Physical access control, complying with CSA CCM v3.0
  • Physical access control, complying with SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
  • Encryption of all physical media
• Data sanitisation process: Yes
• Data sanitisation type: Explicit overwriting of storage before reallocation
• Equipment disposal approach: In-house destruction process

Data importing and exporting

• Data export approach: Pando can export data in machine-readable formats which are based on open standards where applicable. Users have direct access to the data via the API, including full historical message data via standards-based access to XMPP.
• Data export formats:
  • CSV
  • Other
• Other data export formats:
  • JSON
  • XML (XMPP stanza documents)
• Data import formats: Other
• Other data import formats: JSON (via API)

Data-in-transit protection

• Data protection between buyer and supplier networks: TLS (version 1.2 or above)
• Data protection within supplier network: TLS (version 1.2 or above)

Availability and resilience

• Guaranteed availability: The service is available for 99.9% of the time. The guaranteed SLA is 99.5%. Full details about the SLAs are detailed in the associated Terms and Conditions.
• Approach to resilience: All services are duplicated in multiple availability zones within AWS, and each set of instances is capable of handling our full service load. This is frequently tested during service upgrades, which operate using a zero-downtime "rolling upgrade" pattern which causes half the service instances to drop at a time, with the load taken comfortably by the other half.; ; All data is frequently backed up, and Point In Time Restores are periodically executed in test environments to ensure backup viability.; ; Further details can be made available on request.
• Outage reporting: In the event of significant disruption to the service, administrators will be alerted by email.; ; Detailed outage reporting is available on request via the Pando API.

Identity and authentication

• User authentication needed: Yes
• User authentication:
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Identity federation with existing provider (for example Google Apps)
  • Username or password
  • Other
• Other user authentication: User registration: Users must have access to a whitelisted domain email address to register with Pando. On entering that email address, an activation code is sent to the email address which must be entered to gain access to the App. This activation code remains active for 24 hours. Additionally, the NHS.Net SSO service can be used instead of an activation code.; ; PIN login: Users must set a 4-digit PIN which must be entered to gain access to the App. This PIN cannot be removed, and the timeout cannot be altered by the user.
• Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels: Pando has 3 levels of user; regular user, organisation admin user, and network admin user.; ; Regular users can create their own conversation groups but cannot edit access for other users.; Organisation admin users can access overview information and remove users from their organisation. They can edit and delete teams and other organisational information.; Network admin users have the same permissions as organisation admin users, but applied to a network (multiple organisations).; ; Admin users have the same protections as regular users (per-device access tokens, 2-factor, etc). Administrative API calls use a parallel set of API endpoints to facilitate automated testing.
• Access restriction testing frequency: At least every 6 months
• Management access authentication:
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Identity federation with existing provider (for example Google Apps)
  • Username or password
  • Other
• Description of management access authentication: As for standard user accounts, with additional vetting by Pando staff.

Audit information for users

• Access to user activity audit information: Users receive audit information on a regular basis
• How long user audit data is stored for: User-defined
• Access to supplier activity audit information: Users receive audit information on a regular basis
• How long supplier audit data is stored for: User-defined
• How long system logs are stored for: At least 12 months

Standards and certifications

• ISO/IEC 27001 certification: No
• ISO 28000:2007 certification: No
• CSA STAR certification: No
• PCI certification: No
• Other security certifications: Yes
• Any other security certifications:
  • AWS server is ISO 27001 certificated
  • CyberEssentials Plus
  • DSP Toolkit submitted June 2020 Standards Exceeded.

Security governance

• Named board-level person responsible for service security: Yes
• Security governance certified: Yes
• Security governance standards: Other
• Other security governance standards: DSP Toolkit (Standards Exceeded), ISO 27001 standards adhered to and certification in progress. Data centre (AWS is certified to ISO 27001), Cyber Essentials Plus certification.
• Information security policies and processes: Forward Clinical Ltd trading as Pando follows ISO 27001 processes and procedures and, as such, ensures that information and security policies and procedures are distributed to staff via the CyberSmart policy distribution system and included in the Charlie HR system. These include but are not limited to:; ; • Information security policy and objectives (clauses 5.2 and 6.2); • Inventory of assets (clause A.8.1.1); • Acceptable use of assets (clause A.8.1.3); • Access control policy (clause A.9.1.1); • Operating procedures for IT management (clause A.12.1.1); • Secure system engineering principles (clause A.14.2.5); • Supplier security policy (clause A.15.1.1); • Incident management procedure (clause A.16.1.5); • Business continuity procedures (clause A.17.1.2); • Statutory, regulatory, and contractual requirements (clause A.18.1.1); ; Policies are agreed by the Information Security Group (ISG) that meets monthly and are signed off at Board level. The last full review of policies and procedures took place in February 2020 in advance of submission of the NHS DSP Toolkit which obtained an outcome of ‘standards exceeded’. Routine ‘spot checks’ are carried out to ensure that the staff adhere to policies and workstations are monitored to ensure compliance by Kolide monitoring software.

Operational security

• Configuration and change management standard: Supplier-defined controls
• Configuration and change management approach: Every change is scoped and ticketed for tracking purposes, and this ticket is associated with each code change. All code changes are fully recorded in source control. Infrastructure changes are also fully defined in code, allowing the same practices to be applied for each.; ; Tickets are reviewed for security impact during initial design phases by a dedicated security panel, and each code change is reviewed for security, resilience and correctness.; ; Once the changes are applied, new builds and deployments are automatically generated which are tested by both developers and dedicated test engineers prior to release.
• Vulnerability management type: Supplier-defined controls
• Vulnerability management approach: Vulnerabilities are assessed based on potential seriousness and ease of exploit - the latter including preconditions such as "must be a registered user".; ; Vulnerabilities that are serious and highly exploitable are fixed as soon as possible. For backend and desktop services, a new release and deploy can be performed very rapidly - within 30 minutes. For Pando's mobile apps, a new version can be submitted to the App stores within 3 hours, and in the meantime features can be disabled remotely.; ; Vulnerabilities are found by automated tooling (including dependency analysis), continuous testing, and third-party reporting (including users).
• Protective monitoring type: Supplier-defined controls
• Protective monitoring approach: All accesses are logged and sent to a searchable logging system. All access-control failures are treated as potential errors, and are recorded by our fault reporting system; a surge in these would cause an alert which we would identify as a potential compromise attempt.; ; Potential compromises are tackled by examining historical data, such as access logs, to determine the extent of any breach, and by working to close off the vulnerability. Pando is designed such that data compromises are concentrated in the backend, which can be re-deployed rapidly.; ; Incident response is always our highest priority.
• Incident management type: Supplier-defined controls
• Incident management approach: Incidents are raised either automatically by our monitoring systems, by customers via our support team, or by staff. Incidents are actioned and escalated appropriately depending on severity.; ; If required to resolve incidents, engineering staff are on-call 24/7, and processes are in place to ensure specialists and senior management are available if needed.; ; Once incidents are resolved, post-incident reviews are carried out to ensure continual service improvement. We work collaboratively to understand the causes of the incident and gain insight into the effectiveness of our response. Remediation tasks and process improvements are prioritised accordingly.

Secure development

• Approach to secure software development best practice: Conforms to a recognised standard, but self-assessed

Public sector networks

• Connection to public sector networks: No

Pricing

• Price: £2 to £10 a user a month
• Discount for educational organisations: Yes
• Free trial available: Yes
• Description of free trial: PandoMessenger (no time limit for NHS):; iOS, Android and Web (desktop) platforms; secure messaging, image capture/export/sharing/gallery, file sharing, availability, directory, task management.; ; Paid:; PandoControl - control data and users via control centre, on/offboarding, analytics, audit.; Premium - Ask Advice (Advice and Guidance platform) and Pager+ (Pager Replacement).
• Link to free trial: https://www.nhs.uk/apps-library/pando/

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at philip@hellopando.com. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.