Finding the right information at the right time for the right decision

NHS West Sussex is helping smooth the way for organisational change with its new knowledge management system

A KTP Project with London South Bank University is providing the technical capability to locate, manage, secure and disseminate relevant and accurate medical information to NHS West Sussex.

NHS West Sussex and other Primary Care Trusts have expressed concerns that significant time resources are currently being wasted in locating and re-formatting critical information. KTP Associate Jon Avalon and LSBU academic Vic Lane took on this massive task in order to dramatically improve the efficiency and effectiveness of staff time. “We did not have the internal expertise to take on a project of this scale ourselves. By working with London South Bank University we can maintain corporate intelligence whilst also establishing a knowledge management infrastructure that allows managers to understand, manage and use knowledge in making strategic decisions for community health,” reports Peter Hayward, Assistant Director of Public Health.

In the last decade information growth has been astronomical and volume of content continues to increase. Correct and appropriate use of this knowledge bank is essential if NHS West Sussex is to use this knowledge for strategic interventions in areas where medical resources are both expensive and limited. “The new system will be used as a way of identifying knowledge sources which can be used to make a strong evidence base for clinical decision making. Staff can use this one-stop-shop to answer their questions rather than having to spend time finding out that same information from various staff members. It will identify skills sets both within the organisation and external skills that are linked in. In addition it will allow a user to rank a knowledge source depending on how relevant it is; the idea is that once the system has been used a few times the most relevant and useful information will be presented first,” says Jon.

Jon has worked closely with the NHS West Sussex management team to identify where information is created, located and stored and how this information is currently used in decision making. A comprehensive audit was completed of existing knowledge and information, generated both within the organisation and knowledge originating externally.”Part of what we noticed is that how somebody answered a question depended entirely on what they knew as opposed to what was available for the entire organisation; different people were going to different sources for the same information,” comments Jon.

After completing the audit Jon needed to develop a theory around how they could bring together all information and knowledge into one location. The theory was tested to see of it matched up with the current ways of reviewing evidence. The protocol was tested by a layman with no clinical knowledge, or training in evidence review procedures. The layman was presented with a treatment query previously answered by a public health consultant group, and asked to use the protocol in order to gather evidence and provide an answer to the query. Using the protocol the layman was able to come to the same conclusions as the consultant group using similar and overlapping evidence to support his conclusions.

Peter feels that this proves that the system can save time and money, as answers can be found easily by non-medical persons meaning less reliance on using experienced doctors to locate relevant information. “It will allow us to bring more timely and accurate evidence to bear, making a real impact on the quality of what we produce. It is predicted that once fully implemented the Primary Care Trust will see efficiency savings of £330k. We have also estimated cost savings in treatment decisions of between £900k and up to £3 million per annum. ”

“The system has now been modified so it can be used in different environments and industries, not just public health. There are currently plans to trial the system in research centres and the finance industry,” reports Jon.

LSBU Academic Vic Lane, who has provided his academic and business experience to the project, says "In earlier KTPs, I have been involved with knowledge acquisition and storage. This project has been a unique opportunity to use stored knowledge as the basis of decision-making in public health medicine, i.e. Contributing to improved healthcare of the population of the West Sussex PCT – and PCTs are the drivers of a continuously improving NHS"

Jon presented his project in Finland last year at the Academy of World Business and Marketing and Management Development conference, answering the question, are we losing our knowledge?