WISH PRESENTS PATIENT SAFETY INNOVATIONS AT INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE IN PAKISTAN
Doha, Qatar, 12 May 2016: The World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH) has presented key findings from the National Reporting and Learning System (LHSN), as well as an overview of the ‘CareReport’ system, to a group of leading health experts in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
The event, entitled ‘The First International Conference on Patient Safety’, took place from 7th – 8th May at Riphah International University and is the first conference of its kind to be held in Pakistan. The event connected policymakers and healthcare providers from around the world with local stakeholders in an effort to improve patient safety across the country.
The WISH research was presented by Josh Symons, who currently leads the Big Data and Analytical Unit as part of the Centre for Health Policy at St Mary’s Hospital, Imperial College London. Mr Symons spoke about the CareReport, a new application for patient safety incident reporting and learning, which leverages latest technologies and human behavioural insights, and can help reduce the incidence of preventable medical errors in Pakistan and beyond.
Mr Symons said: “The opportunity to present CareReport as a practical output from three years of research in patient safety reporting is extremely exciting. Showcasing the excellent collaboration we have with WISH and leveraging the insights of their holistic systems approach to patient safety, while sharing those insights with the international community in Pakistan, is going to be of benefit to both patients and clinicians around the globe.”
Egbert Schillings, CEO of WISH, stated: “It is immensely gratifying to see one of the innovations featured at WISH get such wide traction around the globe, especially since the conference in Pakistan is geared towards deployment in a live clinical setting, rather than pure research. We are also proud to see our WISH patient safety report reach new and wider audiences around the world. All of us will be patients at one time or another in life, and making that experience safer should be a core mission for all leaders in healthcare. It certainly is for us as a programme.”
Dr Zakiuddin Ahmed, Conference Chairman, said: “WISH is a platform where top minds from different specialties in healthcare gather from all over the world and share their research and experiences with each other, creating a pool of combined knowledge. The platform generates innovative ideas and creates guidelines and standards, based on evidence and research, which should be used by those who are unable to be part of this gathering during the conference.”
He added: “The journey of patient safety is just starting in Pakistan, which lags behind other countries in terms of local experience, expertise or literature in this area. The WISH findings will help Pakistani stakeholders in developing their own local standards and guidelines, and they could leverage from the work already done by WISH teams.”
Patient safety is a key area of research for WISH. The WISH LHSN network has worked with 25 health systems in more than a dozen countries to help overcome challenges they face in providing high-value care to the populations they serve. Members of the LHSN compare performance relative to their peers, learn from experts and frontline implementers during webinars, and are active members of a community committed to care improvement and innovation. So far, 18 organisations spanning six continents have joined the effort, including Hamad Medical Corporation and Sidra Medical and Research Centre in Qatar.
These latest outcomes have been several years in the making. In 2013, WISH led a major initiative on the issue of patient safety, with a research forum chaired by Dr Peter Pronovost, Director of The Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality at Johns Hopkins, as well as Johns Hopkins Medicine’s senior vice president for patient safety and quality. The Network has used that research as a springboard to further study how different health systems around the world enhance patient safety by reducing medical error. Early findings, presented this year identified gaps in patient safety in primary care, mental health and community care. LHSN will present its complete report at WISH’s upcoming Summit, which takes place from 29th to 30th November in Doha, Qatar.
WISH, a global initiative of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development (QF), is a meeting point for thousands of high-level policymakers, academics and professionals. It has evolved into a key platform for the dissemination of healthcare innovation and best practices.
