Lead partner
The University of Melbourne
MACH PARTNERS
Western Health
Altona North Medical Centre
This project has two main aims.
- Use health professional and consumer co-design to develop a technology platform (“Future Health Today”) which will be used in general practice for a quality improvement program consisting of audit, feedback and clinical decision support for chronic disease screening, diagnosis and management.
- Implement and evaluate Future Health Today in ‘real world’ general practice.
The goal of FHT is to create a new standard-of-care in primary care for patients at risk, or diagnosed with chronic diseases, focused on chronic kidney disease (CKD), type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
It will do this by designing and testing an e-technology prototype, a novel platform to extract primary care performance data for clinical audit and decision support to facilitate chronic disease prevention, management and quality improvement. FHT e-technology will translate learnings from our previous projects EMAP-CKD (2012-2014) and CD IMPACT programs (first pilot 2016-2018), which resulted in improvements in documented disease diagnosis and management utilising small scale delivery methods.
FHT will adapt these programs to enable our quality improvement programs to be delivered at scale into the healthcare system, driving systemic and cultural changes to clinical practice, through an implementation science approach. The initial prototype development and testing will focus on CKD detection and management as a proof of concept.
Expansion activities funded through the MRFF RART 2.2 Scheme include establishing a randomised clinical trial using the prototype developed in the original project include ongoing technology development and revision of the trial protocol based on findings from the pilot.
This project is supported by the Australian Government’s Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) as part of the Rapid Applied Research Translation program.
Developed by a team at The University of Melbourne, the project has shown that the novel FHT software tool has improved awareness of chronic kidney disease and cancer risk in participating general practices. Doctors and nurses have reported that the FHT clinical decision support tool and associated resources have effectively reduced cognitive load and supported them in addressing the clinical needs of patients.
This project has optimised the FHT clinical decision support software to increase end user uptake and improve management of patients with chronic kidney disease and type 2 diabetes, to identify cancer risk and to improve cardiovascular management in patients with chronic kidney disease and cardiovascular disease.
The findings and learnings from the optimisation project have directly informed refinement of the FHT platform to optimise use and successfully integrate additional disease/condition modules.
- Chima S, Martinez-Gutierrez J, Hunter B, Manski-Nankervis J, Emery J. (2022) Optimization of a Quality Improvement Tool for Cancer Diagnosis in Primary Care: Qualitative Study. JMIR Formative research. 4;6(8) doi: 10.2196/39277
- Manski-Nankervis J, Alexander K, Biezen R, Jones J, Hunter B, Emery J, Lumsden N, Boyle D, Gunn J, McMorrow R, Prictor M, Taylor M, Hallinan C, Chondros P, Janus E, McIntosh J, Nelson C. (2021) Towards optimising chronic kidney disease detection and management in primary care: Underlying theory and protocol for technology development using an Integrated Knowledge Translation approach. Health Informatics Journal. doi: 1177/14604582211008227
- Hunter B, Biezen R, Alexander K, Lumsden N, Hallinan C, Wood A, McMorrow R, Jones J, Nelson C, Manski-Nankervis J. (2020) Future Health Today: Co-design of an electronic chronic disease quality improvement tool for use in general practice using a service design approach. BMJ Open. 10;12, doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2020-040228
- Tien H, Manski-Nankervis J, Hunter B (2020) Future Health Today: exploring barriers and facilitators to implementation of a new technology platform for quality improvement in general practice. Australian Journal of Primary Health 26: liii https://ici2016-c10000.epresenter.com.au/clients/57/487/submissions/95734/abstract.pdf
Project ECHO® education series (24 sessions delivered):
- Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) Pilot ECHO: 23 Jul 2020
- Detection of Cancer Risk Pilot ECHO: 13 Aug 2020
- Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) Risk Pilot ECHO: 19 Nov 2020
- CVD Risk and Primary Prevention ECHOs: 4 Mar 2021, 6 May 2021, 3 June 2021
- Type 2 diabetes Primary Prevention ECHOs: 18 March 2021, 20 May 2021, 17 June 21
- CVD Risk Management in CKD and Elements of Quality Improvement ECHOs: 14 Oct 2021, 28 Oct 2021,18 Nov 2021, 10 March 2022, 24 March 2022, 9 June 2022
- Detection of Cancer Risk Detection and Elements of Quality Improvement ECHOs: 12 Oct 2021, 26 Oct 2021, 23 Nov 2021, 8 March 2022, 29 March 2022, 7 June 2022
- SGLT2 inhibitors for the management of Type 2 diabetes ECHOs: 28 July 2022, 11 August 2022, 25 August 2022
This project is an initiative of the Future Health Today program. To find out more, visit futurehealthtoday.com.au or contact [email protected]