Lead Researcher: Luke Cowie
Programme Director: Jane Sandall
Aims
- Explore current issues at local and national level regarding novel treatments and procedures as they are developed and translated into mainstream healthcare provision, and the impacts that they have on quality of care and patient safety.
- Examine the translation, implementation and impact of novel treatments and procedures within the healthcare system.
- Address the quality of information given to patients and carers about these treatments and procedures.
- Explore the experiences of patients who are offered or treated using these procedures.
- Scope, develop and assess a best practice model for evaluating and supervising novel treatments and procedures.
- Develop and assess strategies designed to improve the quality and safety of the translation of novel treatments and procedures including patient reported outcome measures.
Why is this important?
Novel health technologies have the potential to improve the health of populations through more effective care. Indeed, health care stands to benefit from developments and technological innovations in the life and health sciences in general, and in medical science in particular. However, not every technological development results in net health gains. The history of medicine and health counts many examples of technologies which did not produce the expected benefits or even proved to be harmful.
It is not possible nor appropriate for all novel treatments and procedures to be assessed using standard research methods and these may therefore lack the oversight that is normally provided through research ethics and governance review. As these treatments and procedures are by nature new, we often do not know what their short and long term impacts are on patients or the organisation.
These new procedures can subsequently carry risks to patients, professionals and organisations, so it is important to explore the boundary/overlap between novel treatment and procedures in practice and research. To understand the processes of development and translation of novel treatment and procedures, and how these are supervised in order to ensure that innovation occurs as safely as possible.
In addition, understanding patients’ experiences of undergoing innovative procedures is crucial to improving the process of translation of these treatments and procedures in the future.
Participants
Through interviews and observation with clinicians, managers, and key stakeholders at a local and national level, we will explore the processes of developing, translating and assessment of novel treatment and procedures into healthcare. Importantly, patients who have been offered, or have undergone, these procedures will be asked to share their experiences.
The study will be carried out at King’s College Hospital Trust (KCH) and St Thomas’ Hospital.
Anticipated outcomes
- Better understanding of current issue through collaboration with NPSA and analysis of NLRS database.
- Scoping current national and international best practice regarding the development of innovative procedures developed to assess and monitor their short and long term safety.
- Better understanding of patients’ experiences of undergoing innovative procedures, enabling us to develop better ways of informing future patients about them.
- Development of improved processes in collaboration with KCH to improve the safety and quality of implementation of innovative procedures will initially be carried out from September 2008 until September 2009.
- Further work will assess longer term impact including the experiences of patients in two key areas.
