Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical, and medical information products and services, is now able to support primary care clinicians and others to deliver high quality care in areas such as cancer diagnoses, referral rates and self-care through Arezzo, its active clinical decision support (CDS) technology. The product will be on show at EHI Live 2015, the UK's largest digital health event, 3rd to 4th November.
Arezzo is an active CDS inference engine. By integrating with clinical systems, Arezzo matches appropriate evidence-based guidelines with patient information and dynamically evaluates best practice options in light of the current patient and disease information.
Robert Dunlop, clinical director of Elsevier Clinical Solutions, will demonstrate how Arezzo Pathways can be used to implement the latest NICE guidelines for early cancer diagnosis and so address issues over increased mortality rates reported in a recent study published in the British Medical Journal. In addition Dunlop will highlight how Arezzo has been proven to help improve the use of similar protocols in the treatment of stroke in New Zealand. His talk will be part of the Digital Primary Care conference track, which Elsevier is sponsoring.
"CDS should make the right thing to do, the easy thing to do. Yet in reality not all such systems deliver improved patient outcomes, and can prove an obstacle to better care. With Arezzo, it can be shown that putting active evidence-based guidelines in the hands of GPs directly at the point of care can help improve clinical practice," Dunlop said.
Arezzo can help GPs make a cancer diagnosis much more quickly and with much more confidence by applying the latest NICE recommendations to an individual patient’s symptoms. It can also perform a 'safety-netting' function so that patients with vague symptoms are flagged for follow up. Early diagnosis can help improve chances of cancer survival, and missed diagnoses are a real concern for the clinical community.
Dunlop will also show how that, by using such technology to provide the right individual with the right information in ways that make most sense, evidence-based advice can be used across the patient journey to deliver responsive, effective and personalised care.
British GPs can now benefit from the same technology, which is in use in more than 1,000 GP practices in New Zealand. Arezzo was shown to have halved the number of hospital admissions for childhood asthma in one trial in the country, and has helped increase the use of clinical guidelines for stroke patients by delivering evidence-based content at the point of care.
Arezzo supports clinicians by identifying the optimal treatment path specific to each patient, and matching the appropriate evidence-based guidelines with patient information to provide a number of best practice recommendations for the clinician to choose from. This innovative use of computer-interpretable guidelines has a proven track record across multiple care settings, from patient self-care advice via online health and symptom checkers through to telephone triage services.
Greater self-care, increased role for primary care and more personalised services are at the heart of the NHS’ urgent and emergency care review. Central to this, and to wider policy initiatives, is the need to reduce the amount of unacceptable variation in clinical care that means that patients in one part of the country get different care to those elsewhere.
Enabling GPs to be at the vanguard of delivering better care for better value will be key themes at the Digital Primary Care conference track, which takes place on 3rd November as part of EHI Live. This conference track will also discuss the remote monitoring of patients, patient activation, asset and resource optimisation, and the need for patient information to be available digitally to all healthcare professionals. Speakers from NHS England will outline the next steps for digital primary care, and include Beverley Bryant, director of strategic systems and technology, Tracey Grainger, head of digital primary care development, and Indi Singh, head of enterprise architecture and interoperability champion.
EHI Live takes place on 3rd and 4th November 2015 at the NEC, Birmingham. Elsevier Clinical Solutions will be exhibiting at stand A74. Robert Dunlop will be speaking at 11.45 on 3rd November as part of the Digital Primary Care conference stream.
About Elsevier
Elsevier is a world-leading provider of information solutions that enhance the performance of science, health, and technology professionals, empowering them to make better decisions, deliver better care, and sometimes make groundbreaking discoveries that advance the boundaries of knowledge and human progress. Elsevier provides web-based, digital solutions - among them ScienceDirect, Scopus, Elsevier Research Intelligence and ClinicalKey - and publishes more than 2,500 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, and more than 33,000 book titles, including a number of iconic reference works. Elsevier is part of RELX Group plc, a world-leading provider of information solutions for professional customers across industries.