Specific benefits to be demonstrated during the safe and Sound project
Clinicians
The sheer quantity of medical information, even within a single specialty, is often beyond the power of one person to comprehend. Add that explosion of relevant knowledge to the complex, dynamic, distributed pathway that patients must take through the health system, and you have a recipe for error. Decision support services for clinicians will minimise that risk by delivering the state of the art in current best practice, and the evidence that justifies it, at the point of care. Work-flow management services will streamline the way clinical teams work, minimising the systemic risks that emerge at this organisational level of description. The project demonstrators are focused on providing support for the multidisciplinary cancer team, drawing on publications by the NICE Cancer Guidelines development programme, with whom we are also collaborating. Non-cancer applications are also being prototyped which demonstrate the generality of the approach and explore the use of decision support and other services in managing co-morbidities and associated hazards.
Patients
Patients have a unique perspective on and stake in their own care; informed and empowered patients will be a key resource in the drive to improve the quality of care that the health services can deliver. Services for patients will perform both roles - informing patients by delivering focussed, relevant content to them, and empowering patients by supporting the way they communicate and interact with the healthcare staff involved in their treatment. One key application will be an active electronic diary - feeding information about a patient's experiences at home and in the long term back to the healthcare staff responsible for them.
Researchers
Services for researchers will address the need to overcome the current disconnect between routine clinical practice and research. Discussions with the Director and Chair of Connecting for Health’s Research Capability Programme indicate that many services which can be implemented on the Safe and Sound platform would be extremely valuable if integrated into standard clinical ICT services e.g. services to
- capture patient data before, during and after treatment,
- support recruitment of patients into research trials,
- monitor adverse events and pharmaco-vigilance,
- provide clinician and patient feedback on effectiveness of therapy, patient experience and well being.
Administrators
Clinical data capture and service monitoring will make a major contribution to establishing the organisational memory called for by the Chief Medical Officer of the NHS , helping to reduce repeated adverse events and the risk of litigation.
