What is the challenge your project is going to address and how does it connect to the theme?

Within NHS secondary care in Wales multiple digital, paper and individual systems are used to manage patient data. This limits the potential for continuous improvement, audit and research as access to data is challenging.

The ability to record service-specific electronic data does not currently exist and there is a reliance on a range of individual solutions to manage secondary care services. These are generally either paper-based, or do not have the ability to interface with existing systems to pull together data, meaning that small pieces of data are stored inefficiently across different systems.

We propose to develop a core software product able to capture bespoke service-level data such as patient reported outcome measures, questionnaires and treatment plans. The proposed system would enable multidisciplinary teams to define the electronic data that is useful to them in everyday practice.  This increased access to data would be transformative in enabling improvement.

What does your project aim to achieve?

The project aims to increase the usability and accessibility of patient data within NHS clinical teams in Wales.

The system will include customisable electronic forms (e-Forms) to collect different clinical measures and a core infrastructure which will draw data from existing clinical and informatics systems to provide clinically useful snapshot reports on individual patients, while also providing service level data on safety, performance and patient outcomes. Such a system would remove a lot of unnecessary data duplication and consequently improve efficiency by sharing data across clinical teams, releasing more clinical time for patient care. It would also have the beneficial effect of enhancing the quality of the “digital image” of the patient to improve service evaluation and improvement activities to ensure we cater for the true need of the population and not a perceived need that is informed by an incomplete dataset.

How will the project be delivered?

In collaboration with Digital Transformation and Digital and Health Intelligence colleagues, we have identified a software system currently developed for the South Wales Trauma Network which could be adapted to form the customisable eforms and reporting portal. Adapting this system will allow us to deliver at pace rather than starting a new software product from scratch.

If successful, we would use the funding to support a dedicated Principal Programmer Analyst who would be embedded within the Cardiff and Vale University Health Board Information Management and Technology Team to deliver the project.

We will bring together a range of stakeholders and adopt a user-centred design approach to business analysis to enable us to develop an optimal software product with capacity to embed sustainable system-wide change.

How is your project going to share learning?

The proposed project  will deliver a system designed to have scalability built in. Therefore, it is vital that appropriate active dissemination and sharing of learning takes place in order to deliver the maximum possible benefit. We will share our learning widely with clinical teams, stakeholders and decision makers presenting at quality and safety committees, promoting this activity through the UHB digital transformation channels.