Gateshead Prescribes Business Intelligence Software

Gateshead Health NHS Trust has begun to use business intelligence software provided by Cognos to help monitor and proactively improve performance, including the key indicators that determine trust’s star ratings.

The new analytical software, which went live last month, provides senior management at the trust with a more detailed view of key performance indicators and enhances their ability to rapidly analyse data. In the past it could take weeks or months to pull together performance management reports.

The trust has invested in 25 Cognos PowerPlay, Impromptu and Metrics Manager licenses for its entire senior management team. The new system will help senior managers keep a close tab on key clinical indicators such as A&E waiting times, cancelled operations and cancer waits.

Lorraine Gray, head of information and data quality at the trust told E-Health Insider why the trust had invested in the new web-based system: “We are giving our managers, directors and clinicians the ability to better analyse data at the desktop, it is a big concept for us.”

She added: “Because of the way the product works it is intuitive enough to easily track data down to the individual patient level, particularly around key clinical indicators.” The system has so far been rolled out to senior clinical service managers and directors.

Ms Gray said the investment was about improving performance by getting investment in IT right and ultimately improving patient care. She also noted that the greater transparency of data provided by the improved analytic capabilities “Has given us an insight into issues around data quality.”

Chief executive of Gateshead Health NHS Trust Chris Reed said: "Good decision-making in any organisation is only as effective as the information that informs it. This is especially true for an organisation as large as ours."

Mr Reed addded: "In the past, it would often take weeks, or months to pull together performance management reports. Now managers can run reports almost instantly via a Web-based interface to analyse performance in a wide range of key areas. This means we can react to and address performance issues quickly and much more proactively."

Graham Walter, managing director at Cognos UK said that the firm had seen an increase in demand from trusts as they come under increasing internal and external pressure to improve their Trust’s star rating. “Gateshead is amongst the early adopters of our Business Intelligence software and as such represents an interesting test bed in the run-up to the next performance review in July 2003."

Cognos partner, Harvest Information Systems, is responsible for both the design and deployment of the Business Intelligence system at the trust.