Digital referral system created

L to R: Professor Sunil Shah, ophthalmologist and director at Eye-Docs and visiting professor at Aston University, Anne Sharkey, head of operations at Eye-Docs, and Lawrence Willis, CEO of Eye-Docs

Aston Business School has teamed up with independent hospital, Eye-Docs, to develop the sector’s first joined-up digital system to replace paper-based referrals and manual records.

The Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) project will create a digital system that blends data analytics and machine learning. It aims to help optical practices and ophthalmologists to manage patients more effectively together, and to help patients to access specialist eyecare more easily.

The system automatically collects and analyses information about each patient’s procedures and treatments, as well as clinic sales and appointment records. It will include predictive capabilities that use past patient data to forecast their needs and potential outcomes from treatment.

The aim is for details about a patient’s eye health, tests and treatments to flow seamlessly between the clinic, the patient, and their referring eyecare professional.

The partnership hopes this will improve transparency and open new avenues for co-managing patients. 

Dr Yang Zhao, senior lecturer in the business analytics and information systems department at Aston Business School, said: “Our data-led approach links referring opticians, specialist ophthalmologists, patients, and clinic operations managers in one smooth flow that makes the referral process much easier for everyone and opens up new ways to grow the clinic. Once developed, it’s an approach that could be adopted by other clinics to help modernise how patients are managed across the eyecare sector.”

Anne Sharkey, Eye-Docs operations manager, said: “By going on this digital journey with the team at Aston University, we’ll no longer rely on the hand-written and manually entered patient information that still forms the basis of so many referrals and records.”

More information on Aston University’s KTPs is available here.