Keeping accurate long-term records of scans and reports is an increasingly The combination of virtualisation and commoditisation in healthcare provides a new
important part of medical record keeping at any club, especially within the Premier opportunity for clinicians to create and own their own virtual practices with little or
League. We are now able to use PACSMail as a central repository for information, no investment in capital equipment. An innovative vanguard of radiologists have
with on-screen viewing from several workstations on the network. We can also already begun to do so and these early adopters are being followed by a larger
view files from the Academy images store and we can move information to and cohort of mainstream providers, some of whom are joining group practices set up by
from the archive as needed. This approach means that Chelsea’s digital access early adopters, while some are setting up practices of their own.
to diagnostic images is now on a par with some of the best hospital information
systems in the country”.
9
These emerging healthcare entrepreneurs add both breadth and depth to the
virtual skill-set which is now on offer to healthcare organisations both large and
Virtual wound care small. It is probable that this will, in time, lead to the emergence of a substantial
Virtualisation technology has also proved highly successful when applied to the and active market in healthcare services trading. Clearly, these commodities are
care of leg ulcers by one of the UK’s leading vascular surgeons, Simon Dodds. He not yet featuring on the screens of stock market traders but, if there is already
has developed a virtual process mapping tool – the Care Pathway Simulator
10
that room for two on-line auction houses for radiology service commodity trading, then
allows him to predict the most efficient way of managing the resources available it will not be long before others emerge. These will then be followed by ever more
to him in his outpatient clinic. Using this to carry out process mapping of his leg innovative trading ‘instruments’, which may include trading in futures, designed
ulcer clinic, Dodds has found that he can radically improve the throughput of to help healthcare organisations avoid price fluctuations in diagnostic services
patients through his clinic, allowing him to reduce his waiting times to zero. procurement, just as they already do for other commodities such as energy.
Dodds has also designed software that creates virtual networking links between The decisions made about how to provide access to healthcare data across
himself and his specialist wound care nurses. Working with them to understand organisations will therefore have an impact that goes far beyond the current focus
how to share the right information with him (wound charts, photographs, etc), and on protecting patient confidentiality; these decisions have the power to allow the
at the right time, he and his team have been able to build a virtual networking re-invention of entire healthcare pathways, and to redistribute workload across
system that supports the nurse in the community, improving patient care without new forms of cross-organisational, multi-disciplinary, virtual clinical partnerships.
the need for patients to visit him in his clinics. This has the added benefit of
freeing up his own time so that, when his intervention is needed, this happens In the end, the success of any patient episode relies in part on clinicians being able
quickly, ensuring better long-term outcomes for his patients. to add value to information as it is gathered along the care pathway. Virtualisation
will increasingly help them to do this effectively, and at the lowest possible cost.
Dodds tells the story of his virtual medical innovations
11
in his book, Three Wins
– a win for his patients, his nurses and his employer (actually its four wins because Stephen Gatley is chief executive officer of Sybermedica Ltd.
It has taken
Dodds is also very happy with the outcome).
References
Summary
1. www.google.com/health
only 15 years
It is truly amazing that it has taken only 15 years to move from a time when
2. http://medical.nema.org/
clinicians had serious doubts about the use of computer screens to replace light
3. www.ihe.net/
to move from
boxes, to the situation today where members of the same profession are beginning
4. www.medicagroup.co.uk/
light boxes
to bid on-line for the right to provide healthcare services via the internet. 5. www.nighthawkrad.net/
6. www.r-bay.org
to computer
There are, of course, very valid reasons why there should be concern about the 7. www.telerays.com/
potential negative impact that this may have on both patient safety and professional 8. www.sybermedica.com/pacsmail
screens
development in a clinical context. But to focus only on the downside of the new virtual
9. www.sybermedica.com/pm/content/view/138/49
world of medicine is to ignore the potential gains that arise when clinicians are given
10. www.saasoft.com/download/Dodds_BJHCIM_June2005.pdf
the means to collaborate in ways that break down the monopoly that major healthcare
11. Three Wins: Service Improvement using Value Stream Design (SR Dodds) available
providers have traditionally held over the delivery of healthcare services. at Amzon www.amazon.co.uk/Three-Wins-Service – Improvement-Stream/dp/
184753631X
2009
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