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| Effective MDTs: Supporting Clinicians Along The Cancer Treatment Pathway - ‘eMDT’ |
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Better care for cancer patients will result from improvements
not only to the speed, quality and integration of research but
also to the clinical teamwork during treatment. Multi Disciplinary Teams (MDTs) are key to this drive to improve services and reduce waiting times. |
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Since April 2003 the Cancer Services Collaborative
"Improvement Partnership" has focused on two parallel themes: |
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 | Developing clinical teamwork |
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| Developing systems for collecting and presenting cancer data |
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| Service Improvement teams in Cancer Research Networks and NHS Trusts are targeted on working with MDTs to reduce waiting times, improve services delivered by MDTs and report monthly on progress back to the Collaborative. |
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| The Pelican Cancer Foundation Centre is providing training |
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in modern techniques for colorectal cancer MDTs across the 34 cancer networks in the UK. Over the past year it has also been working with |
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Ardeo to develop a computer-based MDT support system that will improve the quality of patient care activity by reducing the
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| administrative burden and helping to manage and automate the MDT process. The system, known as eMDT, was trailed in North Hampshire Hospital by surgeons and administrative support staff. eMDT was originally designed for the capture of data for clinical trials like ‘Mercury’ (for the collection of data from surgeons in over 11 leading hospitals in UK and Europe). |
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As described above eMDT is a system that supports clinicians as they work together, from clinical assessment in the outpatients clinic, pre-operative MDT and surgery right through to post-operative MDT and follow-up.
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| It provides clinicians with immediate access to patient notes and automatically generates letters and faxes to GPs to notify progress |
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| It shares data with local information systems - it will interface with Patient Administration Systems and with specialist systems for pathology, radiology and oncology, avoiding the need to re-input data |
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| It provides instant access to MRI scans, CT scans and digital photographs |
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| It will deliver to external bodies the relevant audit data in a timely fashion (data for cancer waiting times, cancer registries, national clinical audit, etc) |
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| It has the potential to improve care and lower costs by accelerating clinical decisions and reducing patient stays in hospital |
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| Designed by clinicians and managers, eMDT represents the latest development in clinical and management support, using the collaborative methodology promoted by the NHS Modernisation Agency. There will be significant benefits in adopting this system in all hospitals to help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the MDT process |
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