Choose and Book was an E-Booking software application for the National Health Service (NHS) in England which enabled patients needing an outpatient appointment to choose which hospital they were referred to by their general practitioner (GP), and to book a convenient date and time for their appointment. Originally designed simply as an electronic booking system, Choose and Book was developed to enable patient hospital choice. It was introduced into the NHS from 2005 onwards. It was procured as part of the National Programme for IT (NPfIT) in 2003. The contract was awarded to Schlumberger Limited's Sema division just before its acquisition by Atos Origin. The software is based on Cerner Corporation's Millennium e-Booking software. Surgery where immediate treatment is required is not in the remit of Choose and Book since such patients' needs bypass any longer-term queuing systems. Choose and Book has been replaced by the NHS e-Referral Service which was to have started in 2014 but was postponed until 2015 after it failed an assessment by the Government Digital Service. How Choose and Book works In its fully functional mode, Choose and Book communicated electronically between "compliant" GP Clinical Computer systems and Directly Bookable Hospital Patient Administration Systems (PAS) to enable GPs to shortlist appropriate services for their patients. This enabled patients to either book their appointment at their GP practice, call the national appointments line (originally on 0845 60 88888, and changed to 0345 60 88888 in mid-2010) or book their appointment online through the HealthSpace website. Directly Bookable Services refers to hospitals using Choose and Book compliant PAS systems. In this mode Choose and Book 'harvests' and displays appointment slots directly from the Hospital PAS for users to book directly into. Interim Solutions For a number of reasons some GP and hospital PAS systems had not been made compliant in time to deliver the initial Choose and Book targets set by the Department of Health. Interim solutions were devised in 2005/6 to allow patients to benefit from Choose and Book where systems were not compliant. Web Based Referral allowed a GP to access Choose and Book via a standard web browser until their Clinical Computing system can be successfully upgraded. Indirectly Bookable Services involves telephone call handlers in hospitals to offer appointments to patients. The operator validates the patient's identity, offer a choice of available dates and times from the hospital's patient administration system and updates CaB