The Christie goes live with ePROMs patient portal
Better’s digital health platform connects cancer patients
The Christie NHS Foundation Trust has gone live with a new electronic Patient Reported Outcome Measures (ePROMs) service helping to connect patients with the trust through their cancer journey.
The 24 ePROMS forms have been launched across 10 cancer pathways, with another 10 planned by the end of this year.
The digital service was developed using Better’s low-code environment, part of the openEHR digital health platform.
The rollout of the ePROMs is a part of the trust’s five-year strategy to modernise its electronic health record, underpinned by openEHR data standards.
ePROMS are the first in over 680 forms that will be digitalised by the trust using Better’s low-code tools.
Development of the ePROMs application took only four months, with a major part of the process including joining up and structuring siloed data to be used in the forms.
Completed data is pre-modelled using low-code tools and feeds seamlessly into the Better platform, which enables both patient and clinically-captured data to be stored longitudinally and made instantly available to clinicians across the trust.
We’re pleased to see momentum now towards healthcare organisations choosing open data and open standards
Clinicians are already seeing the huge advantages of the service and clinical staff patients have noted the ease of entry in the new forms as well as transparency of data and improved patient communication as a result of more-efficient workflows. Other benefits recorded include:
- 66% of time taken to conduct telephone review saved
- 28% of total review time saved
- 97% of patients found ePROMs easy to complete
- 99% of patients found ePROMs easy to understand
In parallel, the digital team at the trust has simultaneously developed a new patient scheduling module within the EHR which allows clinicians and researchers to schedule questionnaires faster and more reliably. Taking less than three months to develop, the app sends notifications to patients to complete forms that support their care.
Better’s platform, with its low-code environment, provides the data capture elements which are open format and accessible in real-time, supporting the trust's plans for transformation and its ambition to access the potential of data for clinical as well as research use.
In the long term, the trust plans to integrate the platform with other applications into the vendor-neutral data layer.
Alistair Reid-Pearson, chief information officer at the trust, said: “Better’s openEHR platform and low-code tools are helping us modernise our EHR and refining how we collect data with high-quality, high user experience and high security. The use of open storage standards will support integration with regional and national partners as more data streams are connected.”
Matthew Cox, managing director of Better for the UK and Ireland, added: “We’re pleased to see momentum now towards healthcare organisations choosing open data and open standards, and The Christie is leading the way for acute NHS providers in England.”