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Clive Flashman

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Everything posted by Clive Flashman

  1. News Article
    New analysis published by the Health Foundation shows that while the waiting list for hospital care continues to grow, so too does the number of ‘missing' patients who have not yet been added to the list. There were 7.5 million fewer people referred for routine hospital care between January 2020 and July 2021 than would have been expected based on numbers prior to the pandemic. These ‘missing patients’ are in addition to the record 5.6 million people already on the waiting list. This lower than expected number of people referred for hospital care, including for routine procedures such as hip or knee surgery, is likely to be due to a number of reasons. Some people may not have sought treatment for health concerns during the pandemic, while others may have seen their GP but not yet been referred due to the pressure on hospital services during the pandemic. In some instances, care may no longer be needed. The analysis comes alongside a BBC Panorama documentary (Monday 27 September) revealing the scale of the elective care backlog and the impact delays are having on people’s lives. The Health Foundation analysis, shared with Panorama, also shows that the pandemic had a much worse effect on the hospital care provided in some areas of England than it did in others. The analysis of 42 local integrated care systems (ICSs) shows that the pandemic significantly reduced the level of routine hospital care performed across the country – in the worst affected area routine hospital care dropped by 37% while in the least affected area there was a 13% reduction. Read the full article here Source: The Health Foundation
  2. News Article
    NHSX have revealed that they will fund and support 14 new projects across the country to help half a million people receive care at home using digital technology. This will include remote cardiac rehabilitation services and digital self-management systems, as well as parental support services for families of children with eating disorders. Tara Donnelly, Chief Digital Officer at NHSX, said: “Through our Digital Health Partnership Award, these organisations will have access to the expertise and support they need to adopt or expand their digital capabilities safely and effectively, allowing many more patients with long term conditions to receive their care from the comfort of their homes rather than always having to attend primary and acute settings.” In addition to innovation in digital technology, a number of the projects build on existing services to ensure more patients can benefit from remote services. One of the projects also includes the expansion of secure video services at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, which will make it possible for patients and carers, as well as their doctors, to share seizure videos across their neurology service. Cambridgeshire Community Services are also expanding their remote health monitoring service. Read the full article here Source: National Health Executive
  3. News Article
    Covid has created an urgent need, and a unique opportunity, to get the true waiting list out in the open. The English waiting list continues to break new records in the aftermath of Covid, and even the Secretary of State says it could reach 13 million patients. But the referral-to-treatment data – bad as it is – doesn’t reveal the full scale of the backlog, partly because not all waiting lists fall under RTT rules, but also because the RTT waiting list data is inaccurate and incomplete. The scale of these hidden delays could be vast - millions of patients. Some could wait for years, some indefinitely, always taking second place to the swelling RTT waiting list and the targets that surround it. Some patients who need urgent care will end up with disability or death. Others are already in terrible pain. All deserve better. Read full article here Source: HSJ (Paywalled). 20 September 2021
  4. News Article
    New commentary interprets the data published in the national patient safety incident reports (NaPSIR) for England in September 2021. Access the commentary here (PDF, 20 pages)
  5. News Article
    GP practices will be included in the remit of a new patient safety watchdog, due to come in from 2023 under the new Health and Care Bill, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has said. DHSC said that it expects the new Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB) to be ‘fully operational’ in England from April 2023 – ‘subject to parliamentary clearances’. It confirmed that the statutory independent body will investigate NHS care in GP practices, although it said that the HSSIB’s ‘focus is likely to be predominantly on investigating patient safety incidents in NHS trusts’. The body will also investigate care provided by the independent healthcare sector. RCGP vice-chair Dr Gary Howsam said: ‘It is important that we have further details about how this regulator will interact with general practice, and the expectations it will have of GPs and our teams, including ensuring GPs are not implicated for systemic issues out of their control.’ Read the full article here
  6. News Article
    U.S. News has just released its list of the best hospitals with associated rankings and ratings. Scores are based on several factors, including survival, patient safety, nurse staffing and more. U.S. News reviews hospitals performance in 15 adult specialties, 10 pediatric specialties and 17 surgical procedures and medical conditions affecting millions of people across the country. Find all of the rankings and ratings here
  7. News Article
    Millions of people worldwide are suffering from an array of symptoms months after contracting COVID-19. This article talks about the impact Long Covid is having on people's lives and how it strikes both young and old. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 24 April 2021
  8. Content Article
    In his newsletter today (The Top 10 Dangers of Digital Health), the medical futurist, Bertalan Meskó, raises some very topical questions about the dangers of digital health. As a huge advocate of the benefits of digital health, I am aware of most of these but tend to downplay the negative aspects as I generally believe that in this domain the good outweighs the bad. However, as I was reading his article, I realised that it was written very much from the perspective of a clinician and, to some extent, a healthcare organisation too. The patient perspective was included but not from a patient safety angle. Many of the issues that he raises do have significant patient safety issues associated with them which I’d like to share in this blog.
  9. Community Post
    @MikeS @Dianne @RHarrison
  10. Content Article Comment
    Hi @Derek Malyon sorry that you didn't get more traction from the AHSN, it's a tricky time at the moment but there is no excuse for being unresponsive like that. If I can think of another 'way in' I'll let you know. Kind regards, Clive
  11. News Article
    Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust will work with Omnicell to develop a European technology-enabled inventory optimisation and intelligence service which will be initially implemented across South East London Integrated Care System (ICS). This partnership will encompass all six acute hospital sites within the South East London ICS, including Guy’s & St Thomas’, Kings College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Lewisham & Greenwich NHS Trust. The project will have the following goals: Develop analytics and reporting tools with a goal of improving patient safety, achieving increased operational efficiency and cost efficiencies Utilize the analytics and reporting tools with a goal of achieving agreed efficiencies and cost reductions Demonstrate the impact of managing clinical supplies and medicine spend together at scale Build a service model for the ICS which can be scaled up and adopted by other hospital groups in the UK Read the full article here
  12. News Article
    Three quarters of patients surveyed at Jinyintan Hospital in Wuhan, China had at least one ongoing symptom The majority of people admitted to hospital with coronavirus still had symptoms six months after getting ill, a new study has revealed. Over three quarters of Covid patients surveyed at Jinyintan Hospital in Wuhan, China had at least one ongoing symptom – with the most commonly reported being fatigue or muscle weakness. A total of 1,733 patients, with a median age of 57, were examined for the study between 7 January and 29 May last year. At a follow-up, 76% of patients reported at least one ongoing symptom. Read the full article here
  13. Content Article Comment
    FOR SW AHSN, contact xxx@xxxx (07496 xxxxxx)
  14. Content Article Comment
    My pleasure @Derek Malyon In the new year, I suggest you link up with your local AHSN, and have a conversation with them before sending your PDF with a covering email. I think the 'ask' needs to be as clear as possible. You would like them to trial the eQMS on x wards with y patients for z months, and then explain how the impact will be independently evaluated at the end of that.
  15. Content Article Comment
    Hi @Derek Malyon I think you need to give them a bit more info, for example: 1. Eliminate the acronyms 2. What is the purpose of the solution (in more detail) 3. Is it only for use in hospital on wards, or elsewhere? 4. Has it already been trialled in the NHS or elsewhere? If so, what were the results? 5. Have there been any academic evaluations of impact? 6. Why is it different/ better to what is already being used in the NHS? 7. How cost-effective is it? 8. the ASK - what do you want from them? What do you want them to do?
  16. Content Article Comment
    @Derek Malyon and @HelenH the typical route for innovation to enter the NHS is via the 15 regional Academic & Health Science Networks. Depending on where you are based Derek, you should make enquiries of your local AHSN to see if they can help you to promote your ideas into the NHS. If you have already tried that route then I'd be interested to hear what happened.
  17. Community Post
    Look up the Star Wards initiative - all about getting dogs onto wards as complementary therapy.
  18. Community Post
    very good example, it almost makes me think that it could be another picture category in our Error Traps gallery!!
  19. Community Post
    I have always believed that as a patient, I should own my data and that healthcare professionals are merely 'stewards' of it. I believe that legally it is owned by the Secretary of State (or at least it used to be). If I want to sell my information, I should be able to, with a highly transparent way of tracking who uses it (Blockchain or Holochain anyone?) There is an interesting company in the USA called Healix (or similar) that takes your genomic data and manages it on your behalf, only allowing other companies access to it on your behalf when you give permission, and you can revoke access at any time. A good model that could be applied more widely .....
  20. News Article
    No single solution will stop the virus’s spread, but combining different layers of public measures and personal actions can make a big difference. It’s im­por­tant to un­der­stand that a vac­cine, on its own, won’t be enough to rapidly ex­tin­guish a pan­demic as per­ni­cious as Covid-19. The pan­demic can­not be stopped through just one in­ter­ven­tion, be­cause even vac­cines are im­per­fect. Once in­tro­duced into the hu­man pop­u­la­tion, viruses con­tinue to cir­cu­late among us for a long time. Fur­ther­more, it’s likely to be as long as a year be­fore a Covid-19 vac­cine is in wide-spread use, given in­evitable dif­fi­cul­ties with man­u­fac­tur­ing, dis­tri­b­u­tion and pub­lic ac­ceptance. Con­trol­ling Covid-19 will take a good deal more than a vac­cine. For at least an­other year, the world will have to rely on a mul­ti­pronged ap­proach, one that goes be­yond sim­plis­tic bro­mides and all-or-noth­ing re­sponses. In­di­vid­u­als, work-places and gov­ern­ments will need to con­sider a di­verse and some­times dis­rup­tive range of in­ter­ven­tions. It helps to think of these in terms of lay­ers of de­fence, with each layer pro­vid­ing a bar­rier that isn’t fully im­per­vi­ous, like slices of Swiss cheese in a stack. The ‘Swiss cheese model’ is a clas­sic way to con­cep­tu­al­ize deal­ing with a haz­ard that in­volves a mix­ture of hu­man, tech­no­log­i­cal and nat­ural el­e­ments. This article can be read in full on the WSJ website, but is paywalled. The illustration showing the swiss cheese pandemic model is hyperlinked to this hub Learn post.
  21. News Article
    Study finds 54 days after discharge, 69% of patients still had fatigue, and 53% were suffering from persistent breathlessness. Almost seven out of 10 patients hospitalised due to coronavirus still suffer from debilitating symptoms more than seven weeks after being discharged, according to a new study. Researchers from the University College London (UCL) division of medicine, in collaboration with with clinicians at the Royal Free London (RFL) and UCL, followed 384 patients who had tested positive and had been treated at Barnet Hospital, the Royal Free Hospital or UCLH. Collectively the average length of stay in hospital was 6.5 days. The team found that 54 days after discharge, 69% of patients were still experiencing fatigue, and 53% were suffering from persistent breathlessness. They also found that 34% still had a cough and 15% reported depression. In addition 38% of chest radiographs (X-rays) remained abnormal and 9% were getting worse. Dr Swapna Mandal, an honorary clinical associate professor at UCL division of medicine, said the data shows so-called long COVID is a real phenomenon and that further research is needed to understand how the symptoms of COVID-19 can be treated over an extended period. She said: "Patients whose COVID-19 illness is serious enough for them to require hospital care often continue to suffer significant symptoms for many weeks after their discharge." Read full story Source: Sky News, 11 November 2020
  22. News Article
    Talking Medicines, a social intelligence company for the pharmaceutical industry, has secured £1.1 million funding deal to scale up its AI-based platform for measuring patient sentiment. Tern, an investment company specialising in the Internet of Things (“IoT”), is the lead investor in a syndicated funding round alongside The Scottish Investment Bank, Scottish Enterprise’s investment arm. Led by CEO Jo Halliday alongside co-founders Dr Elizabeth Fairley and Dr Scott Crae, Talking Medicines will use the funds to support the launch and roll-out of a new AI data platform, which will translate what patients are saying into intelligence by providing a global patient confidence score by medicine. As part of these plans, the business intends to immediately recruit 9 new employees to the NLP data tech team. Formed in 2013 to create new ways of capturing the voice of the patient, the Glasgow-based firm uses a combination of AI, machine learning and Natural Language Processing (NLP) tech tools to capture and analyse the conversations and behaviours of patients at home, with the aim of transforming big pharma’s understanding of patient sentiment. Through mapping the patient voice from social media and connected devices to regulated medicine information, it is able to build data points to determine trends and patterns of patient sentiment across medicines. The round brings the total raised by the firm to £2.5m, including three previous seed funding rounds with previous investors including impact investor SIS Ventures and the Scottish Investment Bank. Talking Medicines CEO Halliday, said: “This investment will scale our team and the development of our AI, ML, NLP tech tools to translate what patients are saying into actionable pharma grade intelligence through our global patient confidence score by medicine.”
  23. Community Post
    I've seen a lot recently on work being done around rarer NCDs, the 'long-tail' of diagnostic go'to's. I know that a company call Volv based in Switzerland has been trying to create an AI system smart enough to bring these into the normal diagnostic process, not sure how successful they have been yet.
  24. News Article
    Researchers at UCL-led collaboration i-sense, have published a dashboard to collate data on five stages, Find, Test, Track, Isolate and Support, with an aim to provide a complete picture of the pandemic. The i-sense COVID Response Evaluation Dashboard (COVID RED) collates and presents data from the Office of National Statistics, Public Health England, and the NHS under five categories; Find, Test, Track, Isolate and Support for those asked to Isolate (FTTIS). It presents indicators of performance under each of these headings, and identifies areas where more data is needed. Co-developer Professor Christina Pagel, UCL Mathematics & Physical Sciences, said: “Increasing volumes of data are being shown in the media and in government press conferences as a basis for local tightening of restrictions.” “However, these data are often from disparate sources, and are not linked together to give a more complete picture of how we are doing. This was the motivation behind our dashboard development. We wish to contribute to the public understanding of COVID-19’s spread, and support policymakers in identifying current areas of the Find, Test, Trace, Isolate and Support structure requiring strengthening.” Read full article Source: Health Tech Newspaper, 30 October 2020 To access the dashboard, click here
  25. Community Post
    "Are there patient safety design standards for software development?" I don't think so specifically around Patient Safety
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