For the NHS and healthcare providers
One platform for patient, staff and public voice. Built for the way healthcare works.
SurveyOptic is the surveys, outcomes and consultation platform used by NHS organisations, health and care regulators, government health bodies and independent healthcare providers. A fully featured platform, UK-hosted, backed by the SocialOptic delivery team — people who have been running health and public sector programmes since 2009.
If you're a patient experience lead, an ICB engagement manager, a clinical outcomes lead or the commercial buyer supporting them — and you need PROMs, PREMs, the Friends and Family Test, staff experience or a statutory consultation without buying four different products — you're in the right place.
PROMs — outcomes, measured properly.
A PROM is not a satisfaction survey. It is the same validated instrument, asked of the same patient, at defined points either side of an intervention — scored exactly as its authors specify, and useful only if enough patients complete the follow-up. SurveyOptic is built for that job.
What this gives you:
- Repeat measures linked to the same patient.Baseline, post-operative and follow-up responses are linked across waves, so you report change — not three unrelated snapshots.
- Scoring built in, not bolted on in a spreadsheet.A rules-based scoring engine calculates instrument scores and sub-scales at the point of response — including EQ-5D and the Musculoskeletal Health Questionnaire (MSK-HQ) — and carries them into reports and dashboards.
- NHS number capture.In healthcare mode, SurveyOptic adds a dedicated NHS number question type, so records match first time.
- Results where clinicians can use them.Authorised clinicians can look up a patient's completed questionnaires by NHS number and save a PDF to the patient record.
- Follow-up that actually happens.Scheduled invitations and reminders by email and SMS — through your own NHS Notify account if you have one — so the six-month follow-up is not dependent on someone remembering to send it.
- Accessible versions of complex instruments.Visual analogue scales, star and duration question types built and tested for keyboard and screen-reader use.
Bring your licensed instruments. Validated measures such as EQ-5D, MSK-HQ and the Oxford Hip and Knee Scores are licensed by their owners — EuroQol and Oxford University Innovation — to the organisation using them. We build, score and host them for you; we don't resell the licence, and we'll tell you if an instrument's terms restrict how it can be presented online.
PREMs, FFT and experience of care — in real time.
Experience data is only useful while someone can still act on it. SurveyOptic collects patient-reported experience continuously, across every channel your patients actually use, and turns it into something a ward manager can read on Monday morning.
What this gives you:
- Every route in.SMS and email invitations, QR codes on posters and discharge letters, tablet and kiosk sessions on the ward, and a link on your website — all feeding one dataset.
- The Friends and Family Test, done properly.The mandatory FFT question with your own follow-up questions, across every channel, broken down by site, service and ward — with the monthly breakdown ready for your national SDCS submission.
- Free text you can actually get through.Topic analysis, sentiment and extractive summarisation surface what patients are saying across thousands of comments — using their words, not a chatbot's paraphrase — with personal data redacted before comments reach a wider audience.
- Inequalities visible, not averaged away.Break results down by protected characteristic, deprivation or any attribute you hold, with thresholds protecting small groups — so you can evidence who you are not hearing from as well as who you are.
- "You said, we did" with an audit trail.Built-in action planning turns a finding into an owned action with a due date, and carries it forward to the next survey wave.
Many trusts run FFT through a messaging supplier, PREMs through a research agency, and local surveys through whatever tool a department has a login for. The data never meets. Putting it on one platform is what makes triangulation possible.
Staff experience — because patient experience follows it.
The evidence that staff experience drives patient outcomes is long-settled. SurveyOptic runs engagement, pulse and wellbeing programmes for healthcare workforces that are large, multi-site, shift-based and often not sitting at a desk.
- Reach staff who don't have a work email.QR posters, kiosk sessions and SMS alongside email — providers have lifted their response rates well above previous baselines by doing exactly this.
- Between the annual surveys.Run your own pulse and deep-dive surveys in the gaps the national programme leaves, with trend lines against your own baseline.
- 150+ tailored reports per cycle.Every division, site and team gets its own report automatically, with anonymity thresholds applied.
- In the languages your workforce speaks.67 languages, including Malayalam, Tagalog and Somali.
Consultation and involvement — for the decisions you have a legal duty to consult on.
Integrated care boards and NHS trusts have statutory duties to involve people in planning and changing services. When a service change is challenged, what gets examined is the process: who was asked, how they were reached, what they said, and how it was weighed. SurveyOptic gives you that record.
- Consultation-grade response handling. Long-form consultation questionnaires with save-and-return, document and evidence uploads, organisational and individual response routes, and a full audit trail.
- Proven at national scale. A central government department runs its statutory public consultations on SurveyOptic.
- Easy read and alternative formats. A dedicated easy-read presentation, plus large print and other formats on request, so the consultation is open to the people most affected by it.
- Analysis that stands up. Structured coding of free-text responses, stakeholder segmentation, and reporting on who responded against who you needed to hear from.
- Standing panels and communities. Run a patient and public involvement community on the platform, not a one-off mailing list.
Patient surveys and public consultation are usually bought as separate products from separate suppliers. They are the same discipline — asking people well, and evidencing what you did with the answer — and they belong on one platform.
Accessible and inclusive by design.
Healthcare feedback fails quietly when the people with the most to say can't complete the form. NHS organisations must meet the Accessible Information Standard and WCAG 2.2 AA; so must the tools they buy.
SurveyOptic is built and tested to meet WCAG 2.2 AA, including the complex question types that PROMs rely on, and SocialOptic has worked with recognised sight-loss experts on accessibility testing. Surveys can be delivered in easy read, in 67 languages including Welsh and in right-to-left languages, as well as in alternative formats on request — supporting your obligations under the Accessible Information Standard and the Public Sector Equality Duty.
Your surveys can carry your organisation's identity, styled to sit comfortably alongside your NHS-branded services, so patients recognise who is asking.
One platform, not four suppliers.
The typical healthcare organisation buys feedback four times: a messaging vendor for FFT, a PROMs specialist for one surgical pathway, a consultation tool for service change, and a generic survey licence for everything else. Four contracts, four DPIAs, four sets of logins — and four datasets that never meet.
SurveyOptic is one platform for all of it. You get:
- The full lifecycle, not just the form.Cohorts and sampling, invitations and reminders, response capture, scoring, weighting, analysis, reporting, dashboards and action tracking.
- One information governance conversation.One supplier assurance, one DPIA pattern, one data processing agreement, one UK-hosted instance that is yours alone.
- Triangulation that is actually possible.Patient experience, outcomes and staff experience for the same service, in the same place, at the same reporting level.
- Self-service where you want it, managed where you don't.Give departments their own licences within your governance, or have the SocialOptic team run a programme end to end.
- Pricing that doesn't punish success.No per-response charges — a higher response rate never costs you more.
A generic survey tool will collect responses. SurveyOptic helps you understand them, act on them, and evidence what you did.
Why this matters now.
Patient voice is moving from “nice to have” to a line in the payment system. The 10 Year Health Plan for England commits to collecting PROMs and PREMs more systematically and comparably, to publishing provider league tables, and to piloting Patient Power Payments — funding that follows what patients say about their care.
At the same time, the organisations that have carried patient voice are being reorganised. Healthwatch is being abolished, with its health functions passing to integrated care boards and providers. ICBs are merging and cutting running costs by half. Engagement teams are getting smaller while their duties get larger.
When feedback starts to carry money and scrutiny, the method has to stand up: representative samples, one response per patient, validated instruments scored correctly, and an audit trail from comment to action. That is what SurveyOptic was built for.
Who's already using it.
SurveyOptic is used across health and care, including:
Healthcare teams keep renewing with SurveyOptic.
Procurement — three compliant routes to buy.
NHS Shared Business Services.
SocialOptic is a named supplier on the NHS Shared Business Services Patient/Citizen Communication, Engagement and Hybrid Mail Solutions framework (SBS10521), Lot 5. The framework permits direct award as well as competition, and is open to NHS trusts, integrated care boards and the wider UK public sector.
G-Cloud (Government Commercial Agency).
SurveyOptic is available on G-Cloud 15 (RM1557.15), run by the Government Commercial Agency (GCA, formerly Crown Commercial Service). Direct award is permitted, suppliers are pre-vetted, and standard call-off terms apply.
Direct award below threshold.
For lower-value requirements, providers can buy directly under their own Standing Financial Instructions. Survey software is procured under the Procurement Act 2023. We can support your procurement team with standard supplier information, our security pack and a pricing breakdown.
Already gone to tender? We respond to formal ITTs and RFPs on Find a Tender Service. We're SME-sized, UK-based, and win on substance and effectiveness rather than size.
Independent provider? You don't need a framework - talk to us directly.
Information governance — what your IG lead, Caldicott Guardian and clinical safety officer will ask.
| NHS DSPT | Data Security and Protection Toolkit 2025-26: Standards Exceeded (organisation code Z7I7E). Our third consecutive year at that level. |
|---|---|
| Certifications | ISO/IEC 27001:2022 and ISO 9001:2015 (UKAS-accredited certification), Cyber Essentials Plus |
| Frameworks | NHS SBS SBS10521, Lot 5 — Patient/Citizen Experience; G-Cloud 15 (RM1557.15) via GCA. |
| Data residency | UK data residency — Multiple UK data centres. |
| Tenancy | Your own separate instance; your data is never pooled with other customers'. |
| Patient data | UK GDPR special category data handled under a data processing agreement, with a DPIA template for your IG team. You remain the controller. |
| Identifiers | Dedicated NHS number capture; NHS numbers excluded from logs. |
| Access control | Two-factor authentication, role-based access and full audit logging. |
| Retention | Automated data lifecycle. Responses are expired or redacted based on your retention schedule. |
| AI | Text analysis runs inside the platform's UK environment; your data is never used to train models (contractual commitment). |
| Supply chain security | Signatory to NHS England's Cyber Security Supply Chain Charter. |
| Accessibility | Built and tested to WCAG 2.2 AA; easy read; 67 languages |
| Sustainability | Published Carbon Reduction Plan and net zero commitment, meeting NHS supplier requirements. |
| Company | SocialOptic Ltd, registered in England and Wales (Company No. 6990426), trading since 2009. |
A full security and compliance pack with certifications, subprocessor list, data flow diagrams, DPIA template, business continuity plan and completed supplier questionnaires is available on request.
What you get with SurveyOptic.
This is not "buy the software, work out the rest yourself". With SocialOptic you get:
- The SurveyOptic platform, UK-hosted on your own instance, fully maintained.
- A named SocialOptic contact through implementation and into business-as-usual.
- Expert support from a team that has delivered patient surveys — PROMs, PREMs, HRQoL and condition-specific outcome measures — staff surveys and statutory consultations since 2009.
- Implementation tailored to your service: instrument build and scoring checks, sampling and response-rate advice, accessibility review, reporting design for every level from board to ward.
- Information governance support — we complete your supplier assurance questionnaires and help your team through the DPIA.
- Optional fully managed delivery, from light-touch support to running the programme on your behalf.
Most survey vendors give you a login and a help desk. SocialOptic gives you the platform and the people who know how to use it in UK healthcare.
Common questions.
Can SurveyOptic run PROMs?
Yes. SurveyOptic links repeat responses from the same patient across time points, scores instruments at the point of response — including EQ-5D — and reports change from baseline. You bring the licence for any validated instrument; we build, score and host it.
Can we run the Friends and Family Test on SurveyOptic?
Yes. You can run the mandatory FFT question with your own follow-up questions across SMS, email, QR code and kiosk, and report by site, service and ward, with the monthly breakdown for your SDCS submission.
Is SurveyOptic DSPT compliant?
SocialOptic completes the NHS Data Security and Protection Toolkit annually and is published as "Standards Exceeded" for 2025-26 (organisation code Z7I7E). The DSPT assesses the organisation, not an individual product.
Where is patient data hosted?
In the UK, on Microsoft Azure UK South and UK West, on an instance dedicated to your organisation.
Can we capture NHS numbers?
Yes. In healthcare mode SurveyOptic provides a dedicated NHS number question type, and authorised users can search completed questionnaires by NHS number.
Does SurveyOptic integrate with our EPR or the NHS App?
SurveyOptic provides an API and webhooks for integration with your systems. It is not an EPR module and does not use NHS login; most deployments invite patients by SMS, email or QR code and return results as reports, PDF or data export.
Does the National Data Opt-out apply to our survey?
That depends on your legal basis, not the platform. It generally does not apply where patients are invited as part of their care or respond by consent; it can apply where confidential patient information is used for a survey without consent. Your IG team makes that call — we'll provide the data-flow detail they need.
Can we buy via NHS SBS?
Yes. SocialOptic is an approved supplier on framework SBS10521, appointed to Lot 5 — Patient/Citizen Experience. The framework permits direct award.
How is SurveyOptic different from a PROMs specialist or an FFT messaging supplier?
Those products do one job. SurveyOptic runs PROMs, experience surveys, staff surveys and public consultation on one platform, under one information governance approval, with one dataset to triangulate.
Do you charge per response or per SMS?
No per-response charges. SMS sent through your own NHS Notify account costs what Notify charges.
What's the implementation timeline?
For a standard experience or staff survey, weeks rather than months. A PROMs pathway takes longer because the instrument build and scoring are verified before go-live.
Check it for yourself.
- NHS SBS framework SBS10521
- NHS DSPT organisation search
- NHS England PROMs
- NHS England Friends and Family Test guidance
- Accessible Information Standard (DAPB1605)
Last reviewed: September 2026
Ready to see it?
Request a demo — we'll walk you through a live PROM with scoring and follow-up, a patient experience dashboard from board to ward, and an easy-read consultation, and answer the questions your IG and procurement teams will have.