The Medys system is a password protected database with an internet enabled “frontend” which enables users to enter clinical data on their patients thereby allowing their patients to participate in international drug or protocol trials that may be co-ordinated by Medys customers. Clinicians may also allow colleagues off-site access to the data in order to offer support and advice on cases. In addition, the internet web site will be a key element of the communication strategy for a study – including protocol notes, bulletin boards, internet links, participant profiles and so on. Virtual communities will be created around central disease entities such as Histiocytosis.
Users are able to display and maintain data for patients. At the core of the system are “Events”, such as those listed below in the live system for patient RP1
Users may maintain data for their own patient but may only view data concerning cases supplied by others. Each event may be viewed with a click and any attached documents may be viewed in separate windows, also by clicking. These events may be viewed collectively on an event chart (below) on which all the points are hyperlinks to the event details. for convenience, the clinician is also requested to maintain “Snapshot events” (black) which include a “Health Index” measurement – a subjective estimate of the patients health status. This is plotted over the top of the clinical events so that the relationship between the events, time elapsing and the health of the patient can easily be seen:
Clicking on an event in the list or on the chart will load that event into your internet browser – here the details can be viewed including relevant attachments such as those in…
The data, stored as events, has been restructured appropriately for use with standard data mining and statistical analysis software such as SPSS or SAS. It is an internet-enabled database and is therefore ideal for use in national and international clinical studies. The prototype currently uses the Online Analytical Processing Tool “PowerPlay” from Cognos but others may be used. This image illustrates the basic “Drill-down” functionality available now on the Medys website: here we are looking through the list of diseases endured by the patients in the database and drill down to find the specific group of patients that are relevant.
Similarly we can select, say Histiocytosis and view the average health index/outcomes for each treatment protocols graphically. The drill down will eventually take us to a group of individual patients who we may view in the main Medys system and see exactly how they were treated by studying the events.
The above summarises the key telemedicine functionality available to users of the system. There will of course be a wide variety of “Community” tools for the clinicians on the site too including bulletin boards specific to disease entities with search facilities, participant profiles, email links, email forwarding to all members who have expressed an interest in that disease, etc. etc. etc. The community will of course include the patients or families themselves and there will be linked “Symptom diary” facilities for patients to continue to maintain long-term follow-up data themselves and for links to be established and maintained with fellow-sufferers.