How digitalisation will advance patient care

Adil Hazara and colleagues from Academic Renal Research at Hull University Teaching Hospitals, and Hull York Medical School, highlight the need to use stored clinical data more efficiently for patient care. 

Prominent among the key principles that guide the functioning of a modern and nationwide healthcare service, such as the National Health Service (NHS), is to ensure the provision of high quality care that is safe, effective and focused on patient experience, while being cost effective.1 From the moment patients first come in to contact with health services, and at every step along their journey until the termination of a care episode, healthcare providers collect and process vast amounts of clinical data related to multiple aspects of patient care. Efficiently managing the flow of information from patients into the hands of healthcare providers and then back to patients, who are ultimately at the centre of care activity (hence completing an information loop), is key if a healthcare system is to ultimately fulfil its fundamental aim of improving patients’ health and wellbeing

Consider the example of a patient visiting a specialised out-patients clinic to receive ‘routine’ follow-up care for their chronic health condition (e.g. chronic kidney disease). Such a patient would first ‘check in’ to the clinic by entering their details into an automated check-in station (which of course requires regular cleaning, particularly in view of the current COVID-19 pandemic). They would then have their vital observations recorded and a urine sample analysed before seeing the specialist. Information gathered at each step (e.g. weight measurements, blood pressure readings, results of urinalysis tests etc.) are still mostly recorded manually on paper case notes, in the first instance, in many hospitals.