Healthcare data and artificial intelligence (AI) are helping clinicians make better treatment decisions and improve the quality and safety of healthcare delivery.
In this seminar two experts will talk about their work on using healthcare data for direct patient benefit. This will include the use of real-world evidence to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccination programme and to support treating sepsis, in a timely manner, through electronic patient record interventions.
Mr Erik Mayer, Clinical Reader at Imperial College London and Consultant Surgeon and Transformation Chief Clinical Information Officer at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, will speak about his work using Europe’s largest patient data record to improve care at the population level, using the unique iCARE and WSIC data resource covering over 2.6 million diverse patients across Northwest London (NWL). As a Trusted Research Environment (TRE), it provided secure real-time information on how patients were accessing and using services such as GP, A&E visits and community programmes to provide Real-world data to inform the impact of COVID-19 and the effectiveness of the vaccination strategy on our local population to guide local health policy. Curated data within iCARE/WSIC was used to compare the effectiveness of the Oxford/Astrazeneca and Pfizer/BioNtech vaccines in NWL.
Mr Mayer will talk about how this information was used to monitor COVID-19 vaccine uptake at the start of the rollout programme and identify groups of people where take up was low to support community engagement interventions.
Dr Céire Costelloe, Professor of Health Informatics at the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) and Reader of Digital Health at Imperial College London, will talk about her work on the impact of a sepsis alert system at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust which has led to a reduction in deaths and hospital stays.
Sepsis, also known as blood poisoning, is life threatening and accounts for an estimated 46,000 deaths in the UK each year. If diagnosed early it can be treated effectively with antibiotics but the difficulty lies in spotting sepsis before it develops, as symptoms are similar to other illnesses such as flu.
The digital sepsis alert system monitors a range of changes in patients such as temperature, heart rate and glucose levels and alerts doctors and nurses if they fall outside safe parameters so they can investigate further.
In addition to the alert, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust designed a multidisciplinary care plan, led by Dr Anne Kinderlerer which is launched in the electronic patient record system when a clinician confirms a diagnosis of sepsis.
This prompts the clinical team to determine the best options from a range of treatments, such as fluids, oxygen, diagnostic tests and early antibiotics, and ensure they are given to patients within one hour – in line with national targets.
Follow on funding has now been secured to extend this research to include NHS Trusts from England and Wales. This ongoing research will provide recommendations on digital alert components, based on patient outcomes, and the strategies for their implementation in practice.
Link to the event will be sent after registration