St Mary’s deploys new colposcopy CIS

St Mary’s NHS Trust London, has deployed a new Colposcopy Clinical Information System from AxSys Technology into its gynaecology department.

The trust has the largest colposcopy service of its kind within London and needed to replace its existing in-house database that was being used to collect clinical data for colposcopic investigations with a system that would make mandatory KC65 data reports easier to produce.

The KC65 provides information about referrals and attendance at colposcopy clinics. The five parts collect data on each stage of referral and subsequent treatment by referral indication and waiting time and the eventual outcome of biopsies.

AxSys Technology’s chief executive officer, Dr Pradeep Ramayya, told E-Health Insider: “The collection of data for any auditing purpose is very important to trusts, especially in this time when the DH [Department of Health] is pushing incentives such as Payment by Results. St Mary’s needed to have a system which would collect and display data in a manner that makes sorting this data a lot more simple and clear – so we adapted [Axsys’] Excelicare to suit the requirements of a Colposcopy Clinical Information System (CCIS).”

Work began on the system in November 2006 and the system is in now in full use by colposcopy staff at the trust.

St Mary’s colposcopy project manager, Greg Bird, said that the need for a better system came about as a result of an audit report by the Cervical Screening QA review in April 2005.

"It was clear from the report that there were inaccuracies in the data being generated and that a replacement was required. The database was not ideal as it had not been designed to suit specifically the processes of the Colposcopy Department. It was somewhat laborious to use and the quality of the information being generated meant that both clinical and administrative staff had to review and investigate all figures manually.”

Dr Ramayya told EHI that the recent contract win for Excellicare to become the National Generic Clinical System for NHS Scotland helped AxSys to win the contract.

“Our experience in delivering clinical information systems that meet a clinician’s requirements has helped us to secure this contract. The system is designed by clinicians for clinicians and is easy to use. We have a dedicated team of staff who have worked hard to ensure that the system will integrate with other systems used by the trust and have been able to offer St Mary’s a system that lets them view and record images in real time and generate information for the mandatory KC65 reports.

“Excellicare is a very friendly system. Clinicians do not need extensive training, as the interface is very simple and easy to use. With it, the trust is able to support the care of their patients with the click of a button and be able to do all the necessary work from the one system alone. It provides clinical and administrative staff access to a single database containing all patient records, including medical and social history information, referral details, ongoing clinic visits, test, diagnosis, treatment and discharge data.”

Using the new system, the department now processes between 250 and 300 patients every month and has witnessed significant improvements in the efficiency of the service provided.

St Mary’s CCIS lead clinician, Deirdre Lyons, said: “With so much emphasis nationally on the importance of generating information for performance reporting and audit purposes, clinicians are having to become a lot more savvy about what a system can and can’t do in terms of providing these functions. We need systems that support this report writing role and our new CCIS does just that. It has eliminated the inconsistencies and inaccuracies that used to appear in the KC65 returns as we can now record against pre-agreed coded categories so all information is accurate, quantifiable and auditable.

“This guaranteed consistency of data is invaluable not only for national and regional reporting but is also essential for clinicians within the department who are now able to view the information for clinical decision making. We now have an excellent colposcopy solution running through Excelicare and I believe it is a solution that could benefit other clinical departments. My time producing KC65 reports has been halved and as the system collates so much more valuable information the department can now interrogate it to produce useful ad hoc reports.”

Dr Ramayya said that based on AxSys Technology’s successes in the UK to date, he will definitely bid to be a National Programme for IT additional supplier.

“We are definitely interested in the additional suppliers catalogue and hope that with success stories like this and our recent tender win in Scotland, Connecting for Health will consider us as an additional supplier for clinical information systems…we are absolutely looking to further our business in the UK.”

Links

AxSys Technology www.axsys.co.uk

St Mary’s NHS Trust www.st-marys.nhs.uk