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Symposium on Using Information in Management Decision-Making

By rmhipmt, on 16 August 2011

On the 15th September UCL is hosting a symposium to explore how healthcare managers can make better use of information. We have confirmed presentations from Professor Sir Brian Jarman, Professor Terry Young, Dr James Mountford and other high profile thinkers and leaders from industry and the NHS as well as leading academics in informatics and related fields.

The audience will contain managers, including clinical leaders, from across the NHS. The day will provide an opportunity to explore techniques and approaches to understanding and analysing information, to understand where specialist skills and training are required and to discuss what managers need to know in order to really understand what information means.

The day will be entertaining and instructive and is part of an on-going project at UCL to connect the work of Health Informatics specialists with the needs of NHS leaders and decision-makers.

To register for the event go to http://informationinhealthcare.eventbrite.com.  Places are limited and will be made available at £50 each on a first come, first served basis.

Draft Programme

9:00 am     Registration and Welcome

9:30 am     Healthcare Information – the Management Challenge Prof. Terry Young, Brunel University

10:00 am   Cancer Decision Making: Turning Data into Intelligence Claire Housden, Strategic Funding Manager, Roche Products Ltd

10:30 am   Demand Forecasting and Capacity Planning Prof. Martin Utley, UCL

11:00 am   Coffee

11:30 am   tbc Dr Henry Potts, UCL

12:00 pm   A hospital is a collection of people not buildings’ – a Marketing Response to the new Commissioning Landscape Dr Marc Farr, East Kent Hospitals University NHS Trust

12:30 pm   Lunch

1:30 pm     Management Information – Health Informatics Last Opportunity Simon Mortimore, UCLH NHS Trust

2:00 pm     Using Information to Drive Outcomes for Patients and Populations Dr James Mountford and Tony Lezard, UCL Partners

2:30 pm     Tea

3:00 pm     Hospital mortality outcome measures and aspects of their implementation Prof. Sir Brian Jarman, Imperial College

4:00 pm     Closing Remarks Dr Paul Taylor, UCL

4:30 pm     Close

 

 

 

 

 

New paper published: Does the inclusion of ‘professional development’ teaching improve medical students’ communication skills?

By Henry W W Potts, on 27 June 2011

MB BS courses have changed considerably in recent years. There has been a greater focus on professional development, cross-cutting skills beyond the traditional curriculum. It has yet to be established what is the best way of teaching the likes of communication skills.

That is the background to a recent paper by Katherine Joekes, Lorraine Noble and colleagues, now up at BMC Medical Education. The full team included researchers from UCL’s Division of Medical Education, St George’s Medical School and CHIME’s Dr Henry Potts.

We found that UCL medical students who had received new professional development teaching showed somewhat better performance in a test of communication skills, but the differences were modest, suggesting more needs to be done to help students acquire these essential skills.

CHIME in the news

By Henry W W Potts, on 10 March 2011

Carl and Jeremy’s paper on open source approaches in health was covered by TechEye and some other blogs.

Our BMJ paper on the ethnic attainment gap in academic performance in medicine attracted a certain amount of coverage, with the story being covered by the Press Association and GP.

And a talk of mine on the adoption of m-health at Health Innovation Expo 2011 resulted in this GP article. Based on some research using the North Central London Anticaogulation and Stroke Prevention Service as a case study, we had concluded that PCTs lacked the necessary skills to make the best judgments when it came to technology adoption. In questions after the talk, I was developing an argument that smaller GP consortia will be even more poorly placed in this regard.

Another big government computer programme, another damning report

By Henry W W Potts, on 1 February 2011

The Commons Public Accounts Committee released today a damning report of HM Revenue and Customs’ new National Insurance and PAYE Service (NPS) system. It describes huge backlogs and budget over-runs. The story is all too familiar, as Margaret Hodge, Chair of the Committee, acknowledged. Implementation proves slower than expected, problems with data quality… all of which we’ve heard before with Connecting for Health.

So, what can the government do in future? Hodge suggests better training for civil servants and more job stability so that someone is in charge and takes responsibility. In CHIME, we’ve published before on the dangers of techno-utopianism and the need to recognise the difficulties in implementation. After so many examples, there should be no excuse for a government department going into a big IT contract with its eyes shut to the challenges ahead.

Recent and forthcoming CHIME publications

By Henry W W Potts, on 10 January 2011

To welcome in 2011, here’s a brief overview of some recent or forthcoming publications by CHIME staff.

Taylor P, Potts H, Wilkinson L, Given-Wilson R (2010). Impact of CAD with full field digital mammography on workflow and cost. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 6136, 1-8.

Taylor P (2010). Modeling the impact of CAD on the outcomes of the UK Breast Screening Programme. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 6136, 129-36.

… are two papers from Paul Taylor continuing to explore CAD, computer-aided diagnosis, in mammography.

Michie S, Rubin J, Potts H (2010). The role of media reporting in determining public worry during the swine flu outbreak. Psychology and Health, 25(S1), 122-3.

… is a published abstract continuing our work on the psychology of the swine flu pandemic. We hope to have a paper accepted in Vaccine soon too.

Tingle J, Bark P (ed.s) (2011). Patient Safety, Law Policy and Practice. Routledge. ISBN: 0415557313. 220 pages.

… is due in March. This book, co-edited and with chapters by Pippa Bark, explores the impact of legal systems on patient safety initiatives. More on this as we get closer to publication.