What role might better data play in overcoming patient safety challenges? (HSJ webinar summary, 4 July 2023)

Summary

Making data on medical interventions easier to collect and collate would increase the odds of spotting patterns of harm, according to the panel of a recent HSJ webinar.

When Baroness Julia Cumberlege was asked to review the avoidable harm caused by two medicines and one medical device, she encountered no shortage of data.

“We found that the NHS is awash with data, but it’s very fractured,” says Baroness Cumberlege, who chaired the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review and now co-chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group which raises awareness of and support for its findings.

It was a challenge on which Professor Sir Terence Stephenson had cause to deeply reflect back in 2014. That was the year in which he was asked to chair an independent review of medical devices, following concerns about the safety of metal-on-metal hip replacements and PIP silicone breast implants.

“The NHS stepped up to the plate really quickly and said: ‘Even if it’s a private hospital that put this in, we will take it out to protect your safety,’” recalled Sir Terence, now Nuffield professor of child health at Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health and chair of the Health Research Authority for England.

“But the big problem was they couldn’t identify who had which implants. No doubt somebody somewhere had written this down with a fountain pen and then someone spilt the tea over it and the unique information was lost.”