Secondary Care

Bolton NHS FT revolutionises patient care in cataract

Bolton NHS Foundation Trust’s Ophthalmology Unit have recently adopted an innovative ophthalmic health record software, which is set to hugely improve the patient and staff experience within the department.

Bolton is one of the first trusts in the country to go live with the ‘OpenEyes’ electronic patient record (EPR) software, a project that has been developed over the last two years.

The record is now live in the cataract department, one of the unit’s busiest areas of work. They now perform around 2,500 cataract operations each year.

Consultant Ophthalmologist and Chief Clinical Information Officer at Bolton NHS FT, David Haider has led the project from inception through to it going live in January. He identified that the department would be able to comply with national regulations on surgical outcomes more easily if all their data was available electronically, and improve patient care. As a result of the successful deployment and his medical and IT experience, David has been asked to become a Trustee of the OpenEyes Foundation.

David said:

“The benefits of using OpenEyes are vast. The bigger picture for our patients means reduced harm as all their patient history is logged in one place, no risk of missing case-notes and a reduction in missed or cancelled appointments. Perhaps most importantly, the audit data, that we can now store, will help us to improve surgical outcomes.

“Our staff will ultimately benefit from having a holistic view of a patient’s history in one place.”

“OpenEyes has the tremendous benefit of being designed and improved by the community that use it. We have been able to shape this latest version to better suit us and other similar trusts”

Jeff Kwartz, Ophthalmic Surgeon said:

“Using the system has given me the confidence that patients will be getting the correct safe outcomes. It is a great improvement.”

The deployment of the OpenEyes EPR was match funded by the trust, using money from the “Safer hospitals, safer wards technology fund”. It is planned that the glaucoma and medical retina specialties will be brought onto OpenEyes later this year.