Medical company launches pioneering technology
A YORKSHIRE medical company has created new software – which it says will revolutionise patient safety and treatment – and launched it into the NHS and GP practices.
The software toolkit, created by Wetherby-based BlackBox Medical, enables general practice doctors and hospitals across England to work closely together to ensure patient discharge information is monitored for accuracy and timeliness.
BlackBox Clinical Data Validation, which was launched this month, solves the fundamental problem of inaccurate, late or non-existent discharge information from hospitals, which can seriously threaten the health of patients.
It is already being deployed in County Durham.
Graham Poulter, the managing director of BlackBox Medical, which has developed the ground-breaking software and issued a White Paper on what it can achieve, believes it will revolutionise patient safety and care as well as saving the NHS much-needed money.
He said: “The lack of accurate patient discharge information from hospitals has been one of the most serious problems within the NHS for far too long.
“A few years ago, the NHS Alliance warned that: ‘We cannot continue to risk patient safety, nor can we continue to fund avoidable re‐admissions, simply because too many hospitals regularly fail to get critical information to GPs when their patients are discharged. The present situation is inconsistent, high-risk and unacceptable.’
“Nothing has changed. Numerous articles in the medical press over the last couple of years have graphically highlighted the problem, with frustrated doctors complaining about inaccurate, late and non-existent discharge letters compromising, inexcusably, the health of their patients.
“Now local partnerships between GP Practices, Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) and Commissioning Support Units (CSUs) can swiftly resolve fundamental operational issues which undermine patient safety. There is no longer any excuse for accepting poor or non-existent discharge information, in the general practice clinical records.”
Poulter and his team, who have been working on this software for a number of years, said they had been “absolutely delighted” by the initial reaction to the BlackBox software and the White Paper.
“The speed and positivity of the response to our software has been immensely rewarding. Medical professionals from across the country, from the North East, to the Midlands and London have told us this is exactly what they have been waiting for and we are in detailed talks with a number of them to implement our software,” he said.
