Search the hub
Showing results for tags 'Digital health'.
Found 58 results
-
News Article
Regulating AI in health and care
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
In his latest blog post, Matthew Gould, CEO of NHSX, has reiterated the potential AI has to reduce the burden on the NHS by improving patient outcomes and increasing productivity. However, he said there are gaps in the rules that govern the use of AI and a lack of clarity on both standards and roles. These gaps mean there is a risk of using AI that is unsafe and that NHS organisations will delay employing AI until all the regulatory gaps have been filled. Gould says, “The benefits will be huge if we can find the sweet spot” that allows trust to be maintained whilst creating the freedom for innovation but warns that we are not in that position yet. At the end of January, the CEOs and heads of 12 regulators and associated organisations met to work through these issues and discuss what was required to ensure innovation-friendly processes and regulations are put in place. They agreed there needs to be a clarity of role for these organisations, including the MHRA being responsible for regulating the safety of AI systems; the Health Research Agency (HRA) for overseeing the research to generate evidence; NICE for assessing whether new AI solutions should be deployed; and the CQC to ensure providers are following best practice. Read the full blog Source: Techradar, 13 February 2020 -
News ArticleNHS Digital and the Private Healthcare Information Network (PHIN) have launched a consultation as part of the next phase of a programme to align private healthcare data with NHS recorded activity. The consultation sets out a series of changes to how data is recorded and managed across private and NHS care, along with a series of pilot projects, based upon feedback from a variety of stakeholders. It aims to seek the views of private and NHS providers, clinicians, the public and other organisations with an interest in private healthcare and will be used to help shape the future changes. The consultation, which has been launched following the publication of the Paterson Inquiry, will be hosted on the NHS Digital Consultation Hub. Under the changes proposed in the Acute Data Alignment Programme (ADAPt), PHIN will share the national dataset of private admitted patient care in England with NHS Digital, creating a single source of healthcare data in England. This recommendation has been supported by recommendations in the Paterson Inquiry to create a single repository for practice of consultants in private and public healthcare across England. Health Secretary Matt Hancock said: “Regardless of where you’re treated or how your care is funded, everybody deserves safe, compassionate care. The recent Paterson Inquiry highlighted the shocking failures that can occur when information is not shared and acted upon in both the NHS and independent sector. We are working tirelessly across the health system to deliver the highest standards of care for patients. Trusted data is absolutely critical to this mission and the ADAPt programme will help improve transparency and raise standards for all.” Read full story Source: NHS Digital, 19 February 2020
-
News Article
Health Foundation to explore impact of data analytics and technology
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
The Health Foundation will begin exploring the impact of data analytics and technology on health and care in the UK. The independent charity has launched its Data Analytics for Better Health strategy, which aims to tackle real-world problems that affect people’s health and develop a greater understanding of the role that technology and data plays in daily life. The strategy sets out how the Health Foundation aims to help policymakers, practitioners and the wider public get to grip with “seismic changes” taking place in the health sector. Dr Adam Steventon, Director of Data Analytics at the Health Foundation, said: “Data is being used to drive innovation in ways that can revolutionise health care, including early disease detection, easier access to care services and encouraging health promoting behaviours. But such technological advances also carry the risk of harm to patients. As a nation we need to advance our understanding of these fast-moving changes. This new programme of work will help us to do that, enabling us to explore how analytics and data-driven technology can create better heath and care for people across the UK.” Read full story Source: Digital Health, 6 February 2020 -
News Article
Skin cancer apps ‘cannot be relied upon for accurate results’, study finds
Clive Flashman posted a news article in News
Smartphone apps designed to detect the risk of skin cancer are poorly regulated and “frequently cannot be relied upon to produce accurate results”, according to a new analysis. They found the apps may cause harm from failure to identify potentially deadly skin cancers, or from over-investigation of false positive results such as removing a harmless mole unnecessarily. Read full story Source: Digital Health, 14 February 2020 -
News Article
New tech allowing district nurses to digitally monitor wounds
Clive Flashman posted a news article in News
A new app has been piloted in North East London to help district nurses document chronic wound management more efficiently. The tech has been used in community services and stores a catalogue of photographs to accurately document chronic wounds. District nurses can use the app on a smartphone – making it lightweight, portable and easy to clean. Using two calibration stickers placed either side of the wound, the app can scan it and capture its size and depth to build a 3D image. Nurses can then fill out further characteristics on the software such as colour, pain level, location and smell to give a full picture of the wound’s development. Read full story Source: Nursing Times, 12 February 2020 -
Content Article
-
News Article
‘Plug-and-play’ regtech solution enhances patient safety
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
With a focus on pharmaceutical supply chain regulation, Bonafi is one of the latest companies to launch within the regtech startup sector. “Companies operating in the global pharma industry must verify that those they are buying from and selling to are authorised to handle medicinal products for human use in their own countries,” explains its founder, Katarina Antill. “At present, this verification process is manual. Companies are using screenshots as proof and relying on spreadsheets to track verification activities, which increases the risk of errors.” “Manual processes are very labour intensive not least because companies must deal with multiple registries across multiple countries,” she says. “Most pharma manufacturers and wholesalers don’t have the resources to reverify their trading partners more than once a year, which is the current minimum legal requirement, and this too creates a potential vulnerability that can ultimately have an impact on patient safety and increase corporate risk. “I could see that this huge volume of manual work was a threat to patient-safety and extremely inefficient,” she adds. “Our solution gives companies much greater control over their compliance activities because they no longer have to rely on manual processes. It can also retrieve and aggregate data from multiple registers across multiple countries and has a constant monitoring and alert system, quality management dashboards, electronic signatures and workflows and will strengthen the attributes of traceability, transparency and security. It is all designed to help companies to be pro-active in their compliance activities, enabling them to go beyond compliance alone to reduce corporate risk and patient risk.” Read full story Source: The Irish Times, 13 February 2020 -
Content Article
-
Content Article
-
Content Article
-
Content Article
-
News ArticleHealthcare apps that triage patients should be put through a ‘fair test of clinical performance’ published by NHS England to ensure their safety, according to the Care Quality Commission (CQC). In addition, the Department of Health and Social Care should look into whether ‘safety-netting’ advice should be available to the public about how to use symptom checkers, said the CQC. The CQC made the recommendations as part of work to shape its approach to regulating healthcare apps. It found digital triage tools are currently not fully clinically validated or tested by product regulators and discovered ‘there is great variation in their clinical performance’. NHS England and other bodies should assess where people have been wrongly escalated, resulting in undue anxiety, as well as where tools have failed to address people’s ill health, said the CQC. Read full story Source: PULSE, 30 January 2020
-
News Article
Better tech: not a ‘nice to have’ but vital to have for the NHS
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
In a keynote speech at the Healthtech Alliance on Tuesday, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Matt Hancock, stressed how important adopting technology in healthcare is and why he believes that it is vital for the NHS to move into the digital era. “Today I want to set out the future for technology in the NHS and why the techno-pessimists are wrong. Because for any organisation to be the best it possibly can be, rejecting the best possible technology is a mistake.” Listing examples from endless paperwork to old systems resulting in wasted blood samples, Hancock highlights why in order to retain staff and see a thriving healthcare, embracing technology must be a priority. He also announced a £140m Artificial Intelligence (AI) competition to speed up testing and delivery of potential NHS tools. The competition will cover all stages of the product cycle, to proof of concept to real-world testing to initial adoption in the NHS. Examples of AI use currently being trialled were set out in the speech, including using AI to read mammograms, predict and prevent the risk of missed appointments and AI-assisted pathways for same-day chest X-ray triage. Tackling the issue of scalability, Hancock said, “Too many good ideas in the NHS never make it past the pilot stage. We need a culture that rewards and incentivises adoption as well as invention.” Read full speech -
News Article
Ways to identify EHR usability issues and reduce patient harm
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
An electronic health record (EHR) bug that transmits and medication order for 25 mg of a drug – not the prescribed 2.5 mg – could be the difference between life and death. And it’s that seemingly impossible reality that’s bringing more industry stakeholders to the table working to better understand EHR usability and its effects on patient safety. “Often times when people think about usability, they think about design and then they think about the EHR vendor,” Raj Ratwani, PhD, Director of MedStar Health Human Factors Center, said in an interview with EHRIntelligence. “In reality, it's a very complex space. The products that are being used by frontline clinicians are shaped by the vendor. But they are also shaped by how that product is implemented at that provider site, how it's customized, and how it’s configured. All of those things shape usability.” EHR usability issues are an exceptionally common issue, Ratwani reported in a recent JAMA article. About 40% EHRs reported having an issue that can potentially lead to patient harm and about 786 hospitals and 37,365 individual providers may have used EHRs with potential safety issues based on required product use reporting. Direct safety challenges typically come from EHR products that are sub-optimally designed, developed, or implemented. Usability issues stem from a very cluttered interface or a complex medication list. Seeing a cluttered list can lead to a clinician selecting the wrong medication. A major usability issue also comes from data entry. EHR users want that process to be as clean as possible. Consistency in the way information is entered is also key, Ratwani explained. Ratwani also wants to ensure that certification testing is as realistic as possible. He compared it to when a vehicle is certified to meet certain safety standards each year. This type of mechanism does not exist when it comes to EHRs because right when the product is certified, it then gets implemented, and there is no further certification of safety done at all after the initial testing. “One way to do that, at least for hospitals, is to have that process be something that the Joint Commission looks to do as part of their accreditation standards,” Ratwani said. “They could introduce some very basic accreditation standards that promote hospitals to do some very basic safety testing.” Read full story Source: EHR Intelligence, 13 January 2020 -
News Article
Patient had wrong eye injected after software error
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Herefordshire clinicians injected a patient in the wrong eye after a technical blunder, board papers have revealed. The Wye Valley Trust patient was injected with an antivascular endothelial growth factor to treat age-related macular degeneration. They did not come to harm as a result of the incident. The mistake occurred after the ophthalmology department deleted a poor quality image of one of the patient’s eyes. This shifted up the other images, which were stored sequentially using software called IMAGEnet6, which led to the mistake. Although initially reported as a “never event,” the incident was downgraded to a “serious incident” after a review by the Herefordshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG). The trust, which is still using the software, is updating its standard operating procedure and has installed new technology that can take higher quality images. A spokesman said: “Patient safety is the trust’s priority. While no harm was caused to this patient, the trust has taken this incident seriously.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 21 January 2020 -
Content Article
-
News Article
From stargazing to mole-gazing
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Astrophysics and dermatology are colliding through a new research project led by the University of Southampton – with potentially lifesaving consequences. The project, dubbed MoleGazer, will take algorithms used for detecting exploding stars in astronomical imaging data and develop them to be used to spot changes in skin moles and, therefore, detect skin cancer. MoleGazer, led by Professor Mark Sullivan, Head of the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University, and Postdoctoral Researcher Mathew Smith, has been awarded a Proof of Concept Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). It is the first time the University has won such a grant. Currently, patients at high risk of developing skin cancer are photographed at regular intervals and a consultant visually compares images to detect changes. MoleGazer could automate this process, potentially leading to earlier diagnoses and improved survival rates. “It’s a really exciting project that came along from nowhere,” added Professor Sullivan. “It also highlights the importance of blue sky science – curiosity-driven scientific research will always have a fundamentally important role to play.” Read full story Source: University of Southampton, 10 January 2020 -
Content ArticleCase study examples The following case studies show how trusts have been using the tool. Roles and responsibilities of staff have been reviewed and new workforce plans have been co-designed with staff at the frontline to deliver new ways of working that put the patient at the centre of care – whatever the setting. The Hillingdon Hospitals - Safety Supervision and Savings.pdfThe Hillingdon Hospitals - Ward Reconfiguration for Safety.pdf GIG Cymru NHS Wales - Residential Nursing homes Case Study.pdfChelsea and Westminister Hospital Case Study - Empowering Staff.pdf GIG Cymru NHS Wales - District Nursing Principles Case Study (1).pdfBerkshire Health Community Nursing Case Study.pdf Organisational benefits Integrated care levels, costs and common language enables clinical and corporate leads to collaborate and meet the requirements of a next-generation health and social care workforce: Precise staffing profiles and options appraisal support CIP development and budgeting. Gap analysis compared to budget and standards for exact hours and WTE requirement for each band. Uplift for leave is specific to each role and expected joiners, avoiding blanket uplifts that may not fit the needs of the unit. Governance and control underpinned by agreed, costed roster templates, with ready reckoners to keep within range. Improved recruitment and retention with evidence of staffing levels and support. Outcomes track quality, with benchmarking to assure. Clinical benefits Professional judgement in workforce planning is supported by this NICE-endorsed tool: Planning care levels and WTE for expansion, efficiency, reconfiguration and new service models. Evaluating alternative shift models to reorganise, invest or save. Modelling skill-mix and impact of new roles. Understanding and validating variation. Challenging peaks and troughs in cover to improve safety, release capacity and release cost savings. Benchmarking and triangulation of patient care levels, with outcomes for correlation. Mapping other staff group input across each setting. Background on 'Establishment Genie' Creative Lighthouse was founded in response to frustration at the focus on financially led decisions in health and social care management that did not consider the safety and care of patients or staff. We set out to build a platform that would allow all management groups in the healthcare sector to collaborate on safe staffing and financial governance. Creative Lighthouse self-funded the development of a unique workforce-planning tool under the brand name ’Establishment Genie’, endorsed by the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in 2017. In April 2017, the Creative Lighthouse team were awarded a grant from Innovate UK to continue to develop the tool to include all settings of care in the knowledge that patient safety and workforce planning is not only the responsibility of acute services, but of all providers and commissioners of care. This is a critical aspect of enabling the improvement of quality and patient outcomes in a cost effective way, whilst providing data driven analytics to support professional judgment. About the author I am a healthcare professional with over 15 years’ experience working in and consulting to public and private health and social care organisations. I have worked with a variety of health and care sector clients in the delivery of complex change, from transformational change and organisational design process to programme leadership and execution. I am passionate about the safe staffing agenda, recognising that in order for any organisation to ensure appropriate care and evidence for professional judgement, there must be consistency in approach and a way of linking staffing levels to quality outcomes that can then be benchmarked within and across organisations. This passion resulted in the birth of ‘Establishment Genie’.
-
Content Article
-
Content Article
-
Content ArticleThe study analysed whether the system generated clinically valid alerts and its estimated cost savings associated with potentially prevented adverse events. These alerts were compared to alerts in the CDS system, using a random sample of 300 alerts selected for medical record review. Findings showed a total of 10,668 alerts during the five-year period. Overall, 68.2% of the alerts would not have been generated by the existing CDS system. Ninety-two percent of a random sample of the chart-reviewed alerts were accurate based on structured data available in the record, and 80% were clinically valid. The estimated cost of adverse events potentially prevented in an outpatient setting was more than $60 per drug alert and $1.3 million when extrapolating the study’s findings to the full patient population.
-
Content Article
-
News Article
Pager systems used in healthcare could be exposing patient data across Canada
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Paging systems used across B.C could be exposing sensitive health data of patients, and the privacy researcher who first discovered the data breach believes it’s likely happening across the country. “I wouldn’t be surprised to find this everywhere in Canada,” said privacy researcher Sarah Jamie Lewis, in an interview with CTVNews.ca in Vancouver. Lewis first discovered and reported the breach to Vancouver Coastal Health in November 2018. Now, internal emails released this month through a Freedom of Information request show that the vulnerability is not limited to Vancouver. Read full story Source: CTV News, 13 December 2019 -
Content ArticleThis page links to videos explaining what types of errors and challenges there are when using EHR's. By highlighting these errors and challenges may help mitigate future harm for patients.
