Endocrine Abstracts

In September 2021 the pathology department announced it would be going paperless, a change that resulted in endocrine monitoring being added to the trust risk register. To manage this risk several options were considered including the DAWN system used by rheumatology and systems used by other local hospitals. Unfortunately, none of these were viable options. Discussions were started with the IT systems development team about building a database for management of thyroid patients. As a large patient cohort reliant on regular blood testing there were already concerns about ensuring timely reviews of blood test results; the move to paperless prompted the need for a robust system change. Following several meetings with the IT development team the first version of the database was trialled in June 2022 with the system going live in August 2022. Thyroid patient details were uploaded by the system development team into the thyroid database prior to its launch.

The database alerts the user to recent blood test results (based on TSH) but also records:

• Diagnosis

• Start of treatment

• Long term treatment plans

• Referral for definitive treatment dates

• Dose of carbimazole/propylthiouracil/levothyroxine

To date, 540 patients have been entered into the database, of which 220 have been discharged. All thyroid blood test results are actioned within a week and treatment dosing is tracked alongside blood test results. The thyroid service can be audited in multiple ways although this is still under development. This has led to a qualitative improvement in patient care. Going forward, additional arms will be added to the database for other endocrine conditions, such as hyperparathyroidism. The system developer that has worked with the endocrine team deserves huge credit for this database; he has responded to all requests and gone above and beyond with this project.