Developing electronic methods for learning

As an individual surgeon gets experience of performing a procedure, they are likely to make technical changes and adapt the way they select patients who might be eligible for the procedure.

Surgeons often don’t report these changes to others. If they do report them, the results can lack detail, they can focus on how successful a procedure was, and there can be a big delay between the findings being made and shared. Many surgeons could be doing the same thing at different hospitals without knowing.

We are working with surgeon innovators to study, analyse and share real-time learning of surgical innovation. This will reduce harm to patients, prevent the widespread use of innovation before it is evaluated and stop inappropriate use of harmful or ineffective practices.

Information about innovation is currently shared in traditional and time-consuming ways (e.g., paper data collection). We need to adapt these methods so that surgeons using innovative surgical techniques have real-time access to new information on a single electronic system (e-platform). Our work aims to develop and test the usability of the e-platform to enhance surgeon innovator learning across NHS hospital trusts in the UK.