Qualitative analysis of multi-disciplinary round-table discussions on the acceleration of benefits and data analytics through hospital electronic prescribing (ePrescribing) systems.

BACKGROUND: Electronic systems that facilitate prescribing, administration and dispensing of medicines (ePrescribing systems) are at the heart of international efforts to improve the safety, quality and efficiency of medicine management. Considering the initial costs of procuring and maintaining ePrescribing systems, there is a need to better understand how to accelerate and maximise the financial benefits associated with these systems. OBJECTIVES: We sought to investigate how different sectors are approaching the realisation of returns on investment from ePrescribing systems in U.K. hospitals and what lessons can be learned for future developments and implementation strategies within healthcare settings. METHOD: We conducted international, multi-disciplinary, round-table discussions with 21 participants from different backgrounds including policy makers, healthcare organisations, academic researchers, vendors and patient representatives. The discussions were audio-recorded, transcribed and then thematically analysed with the qualitative analysis software NVivo10. RESULTS: There was an over-riding concern that realising financial returns from ePrescribing systems was challenging. The underlying reasons included substantial fixed costs of care provision, the difficulties in radically changing the medicines management process and the lack of capacity within NHS hospitals to analyse and exploit the digital data being generated. Any future data strategy should take into account the need to collect and analyse local and national data (i.e. within and across hospitals), setting comparators to measure progress (i.e. baseline measurements) and clear standards guiding data management so that data are comparable across settings. CONCLUSIONS: A more coherent national approach to realising financial benefits from ePrescribing systems is needed as implementations progress and the range of tools to collect information will lead to exponential data growth. The move towards more sophisticated closed-loop systems that integrate prescribing, administration and dispensing, as well as increasingly empowered patients accessing their data through portals and portable devices, will accelerate these developments. Meaningful analysis of data will be the key to realise benefits associated with systems.

Establishing data-intensive healthcare: the case of Hospital Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration systems in Scotland.

BACKGROUND: Creating learning health systems, characterised by the use and repeated reuse of demographic, process and clinical data to improve the safety, quality and efficiency of care, is a key aim in realising the potential benefits and efficiency savings associated with the implementation of health information technology. OBJECTIVES: We sought to investigate stakeholder perspectives on and experiences of the implementation of hospital electronic prescribing and medicines administration (HEPMA) systems in Scotland and use these to inform political decisions on approaches to promoting the use and reuse of digitised prescribing and medication administration data in order to improve care processes and outcomes.Methods We identified and recruited key national stakeholders involved in implementing and/or using HEPMA data from generic and specialty systems. These included representatives from healthcare settings (i.e. doctors, pharmacists and nurses), managers of existing national databases, policy makers, healthcare analytics companies, system suppliers and patient representatives. We conducted multi-disciplinary focus group discussions, audio-recorded these, transcribed data verbatim and thematically analysed the transcripts with the help of NVivo10. In analysing the data, we drew on theoretical and previous empirical work on information infrastructures. RESULTS: We identified the following key themes: 1) micro-factors - usability of systems and motivating users to input data; 2) meso-factors - developing technical and organisational infrastructures to facilitate the aggregation of data; and 3) macro-factors - facilitating interoperability and data reuse at larger scales to ensure that data are effectively generated and used. CONCLUSIONS: This work is relevant not only to countries in the early stages of data strategy development but also to countries aiming to aggregate data at national levels. An overall shared vision of a learning health system at individual, organisational and national levels can help to catalyse such data-intensive transformational efforts.

Persistent microcytosis and its association to the recovery of anaemia after kidney transplantation.

Persistent microcytosis was noted among a number of post renal transplant patients attending the transplant clinic at the Western General Hospital Edinburgh. We retrospectively looked at the pattern of recovery of the anaemia of chronic renal failure following successful renal transplantation with good graft function (Creatinine less than 250 (mol/l). Comparisons were made between those patients with persistent microcytosis and those with normal mean cell volume (MCV). Patients with microcytosis tended to have a slower recovery compared to those with normal MCV especially from week 12 to 21 after transplantation with corresponding Hb changes of 108+ 20 to 126+/-20 g/l vs 128+ 17 to 144+/-19 g/l ([P < 0.05], 95% confidence limits). The microcytic groups also tended to have had poorer graft function with serum creatinines significantly higher than those with normal MCV from week 8 to 21, 182+/- 62 to 173+/- 51 (mol/1 vs 139+/- 40 to 149+/- 38 (mo1/L ([P < 0.05] 95% confidence limits). In both groups haemoglobin concentration was negatively correlated to serum creatinine. (r=-0.54, [P < 0.05]). Body iron status studies had not been done in these patients. Persistent microcytosis though a non sensitive marker of iron deficiency may be a marker of disordered iron metabolism in patients with poorer graft functions.