The primary care landscape has changed beyond all recognition over the last few years. Running a successful general practice requires not just excellent clinical practice skills, but increasingly high quality commissioning, business development, workforce and organisational development skills.
Quality Practice is a new national federation of high quality practices whose members are drawn from the UK’s best General Practices.
We have been working with the Vitamin D Council for a few years now. In that time, we have helped them completely redevelop the way they produce health information and have supported them to become a self-funded membership organisation that generates significant revenue from membership subscriptions via their website.
This week sees the launch of a new responsive version of their website, which looks fantastic on desktops, tablets and mobiles. The logo, web design and illustrations were created by our friends at Design By Day.
Minervation has teamed up with the Scottish Dental Clinical Effectiveness Programme to produce Management of Acute Dental Problems.
This evidence-based decision aid is for non-dental health professionals who are advising patients with oral health problems.
By selecting the patient’s symptoms, the system directs users towards the recommended care.
It also provides detailed background information about conditions that are the most likely causes of symptoms, along with further recommendations for management.
The application is based on relevant clinical evidence and validated clinical practice guidelines. It has been developed in partnership with its intended users. The full text of the guidance can be accessed directly from the SDCEP website.
In implementing the application, we aimed for a simple, HTML-based solution that would work on as many platforms as possible. A mobile version has been provided for use with smartphones, and a response history function is available for users whose browsers support JavaScript.
We have also tested an offline version which can be downloaded and run locally. This will be subject to further refinement focusing on version control.
Back in 2005 we published our LIDA research saying that 98% of online health information was inaccessible, unusable and unreliable. Things have improved over the last 7 years, but information providers still need all the help they can get to make sure the information they produce is easy to use and understand and a reflection of best current knowledge.
We have been involved in the Patient Information Forum for nearly a decade; as members, supporters, conference speakers and website developers. We are keen advocates of their hugely influential work and were delighted to be chosen to help redevelop the PiF website earlier this year.
Building a highly accessible patient-friendly website in less than 2 months is no mean feat, but that’s exactly what we did recently for the College of Optometrists. Their brief dictated that we redesign and rebuild their public-facing website: ‘Look After Your Eyes’ to very tight deadlines.
Lida forms the basis of the search ranking algorithm used by UK Prostate Link.
Users of this website can browse or search for information on a given topic across 50 major websites. Search results are ranked according to Lida score.
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Twenty years ago when we started working in healthcare we were viewed by many as heretics and deviants (some may say that few things change). It has taken many years to place evidence-based healthcare at the centre of clinical practice and health policy making and there’s still a huge amount of work to do, but the approach that we have championed for years is now very much the ‘accepted way’. Health professionals have far greater awareness of evidence than a few years ago, critical appraisal skills are core to many training programmes and the quality of evidence is improving all the time.
The same is not yet true in education. Continue reading
Watching Olympic gymnastics should come with a health and safety warning! All I was trying to do was emulate a couple of pommel horse moves and before you know it…
Still, help is at hand! The Musculoskeletal Elf website goes live today. Another evidence-based health information site aimed at health professionals, this time bringing you thrice weekly (Mon, Wed and Fri) updates of the latest research and guidance relevant to musculoskeletal conditions.
Many of you will be horrified to hear that health and social care professionals have no excuse for losing touch with the latest mental health research, policy and guidance.
The new Mental Elf iPhone app now makes it easier than ever to get your daily fix of reliable and relevant evidence in a simple and easy to use format.
We’re launching a new website today called Informed Choice about Cancer Screening.
We have designed and built this site with Sami France from Design By Day. We think it looks great and we look forward to adding more content and functionality over the coming months to support the roll-out of this new initiative.