Simon de Lusignan

Dr Simon de Lusignan brings the joint perspective of a practising GP and an active academic. He is course director of Biomedical Informatics at St George's Hospital School and a GP principal in Guildford. He chairs the Primary Care Informatics Working Group and is a regular speaker at conferences on health informatics.

His interest in primary care computing developed after his practice developed their own IT system and became a 'beacon' surgery for paperlessness. He has an MSc in health informatics and a doctoral thesis on the barriers to clinical coding. He has published over 50 peer review papers on informatics and related topics.

Synopsis

Using routinely collected general practice data for quality improvement: Opportunities and Challenges

Historically, routinely collected data has underpinned important research in general practice. Computerisation now makes large volumes of data readily available. UK general practice is almost universally computerised, and is now in the second year of receiving quality payments based on the quality of care, as recorded on general practice computer systems.

Primary care informatics is an emerging scientific discipline concerned with the study of data, information and knowledge and how they can be harnessed to improve health and primary medical care.

This session will explore the opportunities and challenges of working with routinely collected data; and suggest an approach that may help ensure that the correct meaning is inferred from clinical data.