Amy Stillwell and Clare Conaty
Aneurin Bevan University Health Board
Ophthalmology is the largest outpatient specialty, comprising 10% of all outpatient appointments. There is a large discrepancy between demand for these services and the capacity available, with multiple SI’s highlighting patients coming to harm in Wales through delays. The vast majority of our ophthalmology patients are under our care for long term conditions that can potentially lead to irreversible sight loss. With a national shortage of ophthalmologists, and difficulties with recruitment, it is clear a large transformational change to ophthalmology services is needed. Sharing information and utilising primary care is crucial to achieve this; recently new pathways have been implemented which will allow more patients to be managed, monitored and triaged in primary care.
Both in primary care and secondary care, patients undergo a range of tests including fundal photography and Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT). However, there is no link for sharing this patient data between the two. This has previously not been possible due to lack of software on the market to support it.
This project is for the purchase and implementation of Blueworks ‘Ophthalsuite’ to enable a ‘Community Ophthalmic Link’. This is an integration platform connecting all ophthalmic imaging devices to a central database providing multi-directional information sharing. Ophthalsuite is unique in its support of proprietary imaging platforms and scanners and will enable cross-platform review; regardless of the scanner used and whether they visit primary or secondary care.
Creating a ‘Community Ophthalmic Link’ will provide a holistic view of patient history and data, this will:
- Improve information sharing
- Support disease progression monitoring
- Reduce duplication of testing and repeat appointments
- Reduce referrals
- Enable care closer to home with reduced visits to Secondary Care
- Lead to improved clinical outcomes.
