Carl (@drcjar) and I (@wai2k) have just returned from EHI Live 2011 and we have seen and met some amazing people doing amazing things. The lasting impression is that of an abundance of clinically-driven initiatives and the recognition by all that IT is a tool for improving patient outcomes and not an end in itself. Transparency was also high on the agenda with a drive to giving patients access to their electronic patient record. Dr Amir Hannan at Haughton Thornley Medical Centre has been tirelessly pushing this agenda and his message is getting heard at the highest level.

Open source software solutions also featured highly with a whole section and several sessions dedicated to it. I personally believe that the values of the open source movement aligns perfectly with the ethos of the medical profession; sharing best practice and welcoming criticism for the shared goal of continuous improvement. I recommend Carl’s publication for a detailed analysis of open source software in medicine.

There was also an opensource skunkworks were one of the challenges that was posted on the Openhealthcare UK google group was attempted by team at ScrapperWiki. This was to gather all the WHO Global alerts and response to outbreaks of disease world-wide. You can have a play with the data gathered here: https://scraperwiki.com/scrapers/who_outbreaks/

The EHI CCIO campaign is now truly in full swing with an announcement of the first 3 clinicians into this role and a personal endorsement from Andrew Lansley, Secretary of State for Health.

There is going to be a lot more on EHI Live 2011 here over the next few days and weeks but I would like to finish by highlighting the OpenEyes Project.

OpenEyes

OpenEyes is a collaborative, open source, project led by Moorfields Eye Hospital. Carl and I had the pleasure of meeting Mr Bill Aylward, Consultant Ophthalmologist and creator of OpenEyes who personally demonstrated the system to us. Our jaws dropped countless times as he showed us the capabilities of the system and how it truly enriched the doctors workflow and personalised the consent and shared decision making process with patients. I hope to be able to do a whole feature on this system with some personal insights from Mr Aylward.

Imagine this:-

1. Patient attends with a lesion around his eye.
2. A photograph is taken with an iphone.
3. The photograph is immediately transferred to the patient’s electronic patient record. (Yes. Really!)
4. The doctors annotates the picture on the computer screen.
5. The history and examination is recorded logically and electronically.
6. A diagnosis and management plan is entered.
7. A GP letter is ‘magically’ generated from all the above information and immediately emailed/ faxed.

This system is going live in a few weeks time at Moorfields and 13 satellite clinics.

You can read more about OpenEyes in this recent Guardian article. Oh yes, you can even collaborate on this project now and improve it as the source code is free for all to see.

Thank you EHI for a great event and thank you OpenEyes for showing what’s possible when great people work together to achieve great things. And this is just the beginning…..