Information Integration

You also offer the OphthalSuite Community Ophthalmic Link, which recently won the Technology Award at this year’s Optician Awards. Can you explain how this technology works?

Our software can combine all the collated data with GP letters for each clinical visit, which gives community optometrists the ability to view the entire hospital eye record. In other words, when a patient visits their high street optician, all their prior clinical information is to hand. This is not usually the case; community optometrists cannot see what’s previously happened to their patient in the hospital. And they don’t necessarily know what condition has been diagnosed, when it was last assessed, how it was treated, and if the patient is going to be seen by a clinician again. They may not know if some pathology they see is new or not – and, if the latter, they will not know whether the condition has improved, stayed the same, or worsened – all useful information. Generally speaking, the eye care professional should try to chase the information from the GP or from the hospital eye service – but that can take time. So, understandably, the default for some optometrists can be, “I haven’t got the time to chase, so I’ll just refer the patient in.”

The GP letters generated from clinical visits only tend to go to the GP. Optometrists are essentially working blind folded with their hands tied; they may feel they have no option but to refer that patient in. What if they were presented with all the information the hospital has gathered? They could see whether that is exactly the same vein occlusion that happened before or the same nevus that is being monitored. In short, they are in a better position to decide whether they should refer the patient or not. 

Our software enables eye care professionals to make fully informed decisions rather than just partially informed decisions. They’re not just relying on a patient giving their own impression of what their condition is. This also enhances the clinical knowledge of the optometrist, because they will learn what a certain condition looks like on an OCT or on a fundus camera, and they’ll be better able to understand what the treatment for that sort of condition is based on what’s written in the GP letter. 

The primary goal of our system is to stop avoidable eye referrals and make the optometrist the first port of call for any eye problems, rather than patients visiting their GP or trying to get information from the pharmacy. Additionally, it’s working to enhance the public perception of eye care professionals.

Where is the Community Ophthalmic Link currently in use?

Right now, it is only in use in Gloucestershire – so this is the only county in England where optometrists have full sight of the entire patient hospital eye service record. But there are plans to expand. They have seen a statistically significant 15 percent drop in new referrals into the hospital eye service, representing around 1300 less annual referrals in a population of 612k. Because of positive results in Gloucestershire, many other regions are writing business cases and bidding for this sort of product.

What are BlueWork’s future plans?

Though we have a 100 percent uni-directional communication from the hospital to the high street, we also have the ability to allow community optometrists to send data and imaging back into the hospital system, creating a full loop between the high street and the hospital eye service. This facilitates true shared care of patients, where lower-risk hospital eye service patients could be managed by the community optometrist in properly commissioned pathways. Not only does it complete the loop, it also maintains one patient record – all with software that can read data from any device in a manufacturer-agnostic way.