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NHS using Imperial spinout’s advanced prescription software to improve safety
Imperial spinout Dosium is working with the NHS to roll out a clinical decision support tool that provides dosage guidance to increase patient safety. The Touchdose solution from Dosium provides
doctors with dosage recommendations based on NICE-approved reference work with the British National Formulary, tailored to patient characteristics such as age, weight and sex. The product could reduce errors by 76.5% and time to prescribe by 20% according to a study, currently under peer review, by the Centre for Medication Safety and Service Quality. The study was authored by a team of
researchers including Calandra Feather from Imperial’s Department of Surgery and Cancer and Dosium, and Professor Bryony Dean Franklin, Director of the NIHR North West London Patient Safety Research Collaboration. Touchdose is now being piloted in West London Children’s Healthcare (WLCH), a clinical service that serves over half a million children and young people across the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. The initiative is supported by funding from
NHS England in a first-of-type partnership that aims to advance a new solution to the 237 million prescribing errors made across England each year. The software will be used initially in the
children’s A&E department at St Mary’s Hospital, an environment where the need for speed and accuracy is particularly acute, and subsequently
across five additional departments in WLCH. Dosium was co-founded by Dr. Nicholas Appelbaum, a medical doctor with a PhD in medication safety, to commercialise early R&D he carried out as clinical lead at the Helix Centre, a research lab for design and health in Imperial’s Institute of Global Health Innovation. Dr. Appelbaum says he developed the product in response to the “terrifying” experience of prescribing to children in emergency situations. He explained that although Dosium is valuable for improving prescribing safety across all populations, the company’s initial focus on paediatrics is due to the higher associated risks of this group. “Children are all different sizes and that makes
accurate prescribing harder and the error rate higher. The consequences of these errors are also greater because children are a vulnerable population. Paediatrics is where medical error has been most pernicious.” The functionality is a significant advance on the
electronic prescription software currently used by the NHS.
“It is 2024, yet in general, electronic prescribing
systems still can’t tell me, as a prescriber, what the correct dose is for a given medication, factoring in my patient’s characteristics and the condition for which I am treating them,” said Dr. Appelbaum. Dosium has received investment from the Royal
Pharmaceutical Society, which is represented on Dosium’s board. Researchers will now use the WLCH pilot to clinically evaluate the product.
Drones fly blood packs in UK first
Blood packs have been successfully flown by drone in a series of ‘beyond visual line of sight’ flights, for the first time in the UK. In a research study to check the viability
of flying blood via drone, run jointly by NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) and medical logistics company Apian, ten units of packed blood cells were transported on a 68km journey across Northumbria’s skies, while an identical ten packs were transported via road. After assessment, results showed both sets remained viable, with no significant difference in the biochemical or haematological profiles of the blood, which determine if it has maintained quality and can be used for clinical purposes. The study was the first in a series of NHS
trials to ascertain the feasibility and safety of delivering medical supplies via drone, which can be faster and more environmentally friendly than road travel.
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October 2024 I
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