Renal PatientView

Case Study – Renal Information Exchange Group (RIXG)

Situation

RIXG is a steering group that has a remit to improve the flow of information for renal (kidney) patients.

Problems

RIXG wanted to implement a web site that would collate patient data concerning medical tests, drugs and other data from renal units around the country. Patients would log in to see their results, increasing patient involvement in their condition management and placing a lower burden on doctors to report results directly to patients.

Solution

Worth Solutions worked with medical experts from RIXG as well as local medical and administrative staff from the renal units to define the processes needed to extract data from the systems to a central database and web site. The customer as a renal patient was defined. What was of value to a patient was clarified. With this information a value stream for the transfer of data and its display was formulated. The stream was optimized to maximise the flow and minimise the waste in all steps. Quality of data was a big concern, so techniques to build quality into the data processing without reliance on inspection were very important.

Results

The process analysis of customer value, flow and data integrity meant that when the implementation of the technology came along it was a smooth as possible. The time for implementation was vastly reduced due to a clear understanding of how to maintain data quality and what was of most important to the renal patients who would use the web site.