Plato Data Intelligence.
Vertical Search & Ai.

Collaborating with patients for better outcomes

Date:

Working as a doctor in the NHS for over 10 years, I felt that I had developed good understanding of how patients and their families felt when faced with an upsetting diagnosis or important health decision. I had been lucky with my own health, having only spent one night in hospital for what ended up being a false alarm. But when my son was born prematurely two years ago, I had a glimpse into what being on the other side feels like – an experience that has profoundly shaped my thinking today.

It wasn’t until I was waiting to hear, rather than give, important health updates that I really understood the feeling of uncertainty and powerlessness that many patients and their families feel. It really put into perspective how important it is to involve patients, and their families and carers, in their own health – that care is not something ‘done’ to a patient, but rather, something that is shaped by everyone involved in the healthcare process.

In my first week at DeepMind Health, I was really impressed that one of my new colleagues (not a nurse or doctor) had set up a meeting so we could hear directly from a patient, Michael Wise, who ended up needing dialysis and a kidney transplant after a sudden and unexpected problem with his kidneys. Since then, we’ve continued to increase our efforts to bring the patient’s voice into our projects. Afterall, there is good evidence that when doctors and patients work together, the outcomes are better.

We’ve already learned a lot about how to go about this – and what not to do – and wanted to share some reflections that may be helpful for others undertaking the same journey we’re on.

Work with experts

To build cutting edge and secure health technologies we always work with experts. This may be a clinician or some of the world’s best cyber security experts. Similarly, when thinking about patient and public involvement and engagement (PPIE) in our work, there are experts who understand how to do PPIE well. In early 2016 we started speaking to a number of individuals and organisations with this expertise. We worked with the late Rosamund Snow, an incredible person and the patient editor of the British Medical Journal, to shape what a Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) strategy might look like. Rosamund was initially sceptical of our work in healthcare. She pushed us to be more self-critical and transparent about our work, and made a number of recommendations she felt would allow patients’ voices to have the biggest possible impact on the work we do, such as having an entirely patient-led project, inviting patients to do internships at the DeepMind Health offices, and hiring a patient lead to feed directly into our work. We are currently working with patients to flesh out some of these ideas.

Rosamund passed away shortly after our first patient summit in September 2016 but she had introduced us to some of her colleagues, Sally Crowe and Paul Buchanan, with whom we continue to work.

Source: https://deepmind.com/blog/article/collaborating-with-patients

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