Social Value
Digital transformation is not often thought of as a life-saving exercise but in the case of EACTS it is. Leading Resolutions worked with internationally renowned cardiothoracic surgeons to break down barriers and raised the benchmark for healthcare globally.
Digital transformation is not often thought of as a life-saving exercise, but in the case of EACTS, an internationally renowned body of cardiothoracic surgeons, it is. Leading Resolutions, along with world-class surgeons, broke down barriers to harness medical data globally and raised the benchmark for healthcare standards to improve patient outcomes.
Before this project, critical data relating to past operations was frequently lost, leading to the erasure of invaluable reference points for future cardiothoracic surgeries. EACTS had built what was referred to as the ‘Adult Cardiac Database (ACD)’ which held details of cardiac operations completed in hospitals across the continent. However, the underpinning data was initially held on hospital servers in the Midlands, and when the EACTS member left that hospital, so did any history of ownership or management of that data. Not realising its significance, the hospital switched it off, losing the data query functionality altogether.
EACTS took this opportunity to invest in a more sophisticated platform to pave the way forward. Their mission was — and still is — to improve outcomes by providing first-class education and informing best practice through publications, guidelines development, and innovative research. They also wanted to ensure technology and policy aligned with current practice and regulations.
The aim was to collate critical information from hospitals across Europe, drive standardisation of data collection, and verify its quality so that it could be reliably used by both surgeons and researchers. Providing access to individual hospital results means that surgeons can better understand whether their own hospital is either under or outperforming the average and, therefore, provides an opportunity to identify improvements.
Leading Resolutions project managed the build of this online data platform, which now houses over 4000 procedures and 300 different variables of medical conditions and patient characteristics. Already, 20 hospitals have signed up to use the platform, with more hospitals and medical bodies across Europe set to onboard. It officially went live in September 2024 and is already raising the bar internationally, enabling surgeons to learn from best-in-class healthcare.
Without this platform of medical outcomes, there is no universal home for patient outcomes per hospital, per procedure. The only point of comparison is within each respective hospital, which dramatically narrows the parameters of insight and standards.
Like a surgeon working to great precision, the Leading Resolutions team took a meticulously clinical approach to this project, which involved detangling existing IT infrastructure that had been executed by an existing third-party IT supplier. Nonetheless, Leading Resolutions was able to act quickly and communicate effectively to ensure the project was delivered on time. The team also had to employ their best bedside manner to empathetically liaise with all medical board members to ensure the platform provided the insights and user interface that would serve the needs of all members involved.
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