Building the next generation of systems for the NHS. Please come along and join in if you would like to be part of this exciting journey
Hi everyone,
Excited to announce we will be holding our 3rd meet-up to discuss how we can build the next generation of systems for the NHS with a focus on open source and clinician led design.
We will aim to continue to hold these 1 hour meetings fortnightly on a Thursday. These are friendly and informal group discussions. There are no entry requirements and we welcome anyone from any background, clinical/non-clinical and experience level. It’s also fine to pop in when time allows and this fits with your schedule - there’s no commitment to come every 2 weeks.
Here is the link to read about the previous discussions on this subject.
My aim/challenge for next week is to start building a blueprint identifying the key requirements for the different users of an EHR (clinicians, patients, organisations). Would welcome any ideas around this as well as previous work that covers these areas.
There have been some interesting topics discussed so far and if anyone has any suggestions for discussion points please add them here.
Look forward to seeing those that can make it next week as well as hearing any ideas here.
If anyone can’t make the meeting but is interested in being involved please feel free to message me and I’m sure we can try to find a time to talk.
Cheers,
James
Thanks @james.roberts - tomorrow I have another commitment in the evening so can’t make this one. Will aim to get to the next one. Thanks for keeping the momentum up.
I would advise that breaking down the parts of an EHR into smaller components might be one way to gradually ‘eat the whole elephant’ of building an EHR.
For example, I have worked on:
Currently I’m working on a computable ‘Green Book’ for immunisations, which will be able to take a complete FHIR immunisation/vaccination history and the patient’s DOB and tell you if a patient is fully or partially immunised. Sounds simple, but when you get into the detail of cumulative Green Book changes over the last 30+ years it is a LOT more complex than you think!
Clinical Calculators such as QRISK3 and CHADS2Vasc would be a good area to work on. There are plenty of online calculators like MDCalc, but no libraries that would be embeddable in an EHR. Extra points for standardising the UI and for making it work in multiple languages, not just the implementation language.
Each of these components is something that is challenging/interesting in itself, yet is of a ‘manageable’ size for a couple of people to work on and completely solve, with the output being working code and an importable library.
~a complete FHIR immunisation/vaccination history
It would be interesting to see how easy that is to create. How that is fully and unambiguously represented in the first place, is part of the challenge I suppose.
I thought you would all be pleased to note this. Hopefully the first of many such switches to OS.
Sadly I can’t make this but as I mentioned on the call that I attended, before undertaking any significant efforts, I think you need to have a good understanding of what your route to market/use is. Can you see a reasonably clear and likely route by which what you do gets to be used. If it’s a complete clinical system, then that needs a legal entity who will hold all the appropriate accreditations required to be permitted to operate or sell such a system. If you’re just talking about library code (at any level in the stack), then how will this be adopted by vendors who are developing the overall application. Maybe I’m missing something about the vision that you all have, but as a long time supporter of OS in healthcare, these are the questions you need to have plausible answers to BEFORE starting.