With Kwaliteitsregister, ophthalmologists compare their surgeries fully anonymously
Development of a quality monitoring software platform for hospitals
The Dutch Ophthalmological Society (NOG) is a professional association of ophthalmologists whose goal is to advance ophthalmology and the quality and safety of eye care.
One of the challenges was measuring the quality of surgeries. Doctors had no insight into the quality of their surgeries compared to those of other doctors. For this, the NOG was looking for a solution that safeguards the privacy of both the doctor and the patient.
To this end, we developed Kwaliteitsregister: a national database that records surgeries. The findings from before, during and after surgery are carefully stored. This is done completely anonymously. Extensive analyses can be run on this data, providing insight into the quality of the results. This way, doctors know for themselves where quality is up to standard and where there is room for improvement.
The system offers four types of extensive data analysis. To get an overview of the statistics, you can run a local analysis. Another analysis compares the local statistics with the national statistics. If you use the system as a check, you can also run just a national analysis.
The set analysis compares groups of patients of equal size with each other. This gives the doctor good insight into the overall quality.
Entering surgeries can take a lot of time because of the many different parameters that need to be filled in. By clearly distinguishing between fields required for saving and fields required for analysis, it is immediately clear which data is still missing. A lot of attention was paid to usability in the input screens. The goal is to get doctors back on their way as quickly as possible, with all steps completed.
To make sure doctors don't get lost in a system with a lot of data and many parameters, there are 'Filters & views'. Filters make it possible to select specific data, while views make it possible to select specific parameters. Besides a number of predefined filters & views, doctors can also configure and save their own.
For each organization, we develop a specific integration with the Electronic Health Record (EHR). This way, doctors only have to keep data up to date in one place, while still being able to use all analyses.
On top of the core functionality, the system also offers options such as peer review reports, automatic generation of request letters for follow-ups, and extensive data exports to Excel.
Because our system is secure by design, patient data can never end up out in the open. All privacy-sensitive information is only entered into the doctor's local database. Surgeries are first anonymized and grouped before they are uploaded to the national database for analysis.
The system is built on the integrity of doctors. The national data is not only anonymized for patients; doctors can't be linked to specific surgeries either. Users can't see the data and results of specific other users.
In addition to not storing any privacy-sensitive data, the system is equipped with the latest security standards. All data is sent and stored encrypted, we always keep the software up to date, and we regularly run stress and security tests in our test environments.
The team of Dutch Coding Company combines tough technical skills with optimal communication with me as their customer. The energy they put into their work is marvellous. As a result we now have a set of wonderful applications that function very well, entirely according to our specifications and needs. Go on like this, DCC team!
The topic of quality registries is very relevant in healthcare. The need for a system that helps prevent common mistakes is voiced more and more often. The problem is discussed in depth in an episode of Zembla. We build the solution for it!
Get in touch for a no-obligation introduction
