Odyssey SelfAssess

This is an innovation that is currently being piloted with students at Coventry University Health Centre, whereby patients presenting to the GP with a new problem undertake an on-line self-assessment of their symptoms prior to seeing the GP using a product called Odyssey SelfAssess.  

The eventual aim, which we hope to start piloting in the autumn, is for the assessment to be completed prior to making an appointment.  This would allow patients to assess the urgency with which they needed an appointment, and/or whether self-care would suffice, in which case they would be directed towards relevant patient information leaflets to download.  

However, at present we are evaluating the effectiveness of the innovation, and how the patient's self-assessment compares to the eventual assessment made by the GP, the impact that it has on the consultation of the patient presenting the GP at the outset with a detailed summary of their self-assessment (e.g. does this allow the GP more time to spend offering the patient advice and completing other activities if the history-taking part of the consultation has largely been undertaken by the patient prior to entering the consulting room?), and the impact on patient experience and satisfaction.  

In addition to the application described above, the SelfAssessment innovation, if proven effective, should have relevance to safely and effectively addressing patients' needs at other settings where patients attend with new problems, such as walk-in centres, emergency departments and pharmacies.  

So far, the results are promising, and students are finding it highly acceptable to complete the self-assessment.  Obviously, they are a very IT-oriented group and so the extent to which this applies to other sectors of the population needs consideration as part of an overall evaluation

Automated Data Collection System

Our District Nursing service is being  moved onto an automated data collection system which will have the effect of:

• Significantly reducing or eliminating the need for manual data entry, thereby releasing the time / capacity of staff for direct patient care;
• The ability to automatically capture and validate data from paper, or the intranet to provide users with the most appropriate input method.
• Increasing the scale of information collection and validation.
• Providing a high level of accuracy on stored data and seamless integration between data and original documentation.
• The generation of statistical analysis and reports quickly on the collected data.