Processes used by the software provider to produce its Odyssey clinical decision support system is accredited by NICE for a further five years
12th February 2019 – The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has recognised Advanced for demonstrating high standards in producing healthcare guidance. Advanced’s flagship clinical decision support technology, Odyssey, has been renewed on the NICE Accreditation Programme for a further five years to January 2023.
Odyssey is designed to support primary care and urgent care assessment of clinical needs, either in person or remotely. It is used by clinical and non-clinically trained staff at many urgent care providers in the UK and other areas of the world to triage patients across a variety of services, including national help lines (such as in New Zealand), ambulance services, and in-hours GP services. The system has a unique approach in which it prompts users to narrow down presenting symptoms into triage outcomes and suggests next steps, for example referral or self-care. Being accredited by NICE, users of Odyssey have high confidence in the quality of guidance to support their role.
“The NICE accreditation is something many health and care providers strive for, but is very difficult to achieve, so we are extremely proud to see efforts rewarded,” said Dr Alex Yeates, Medical Director at Advanced. “There are no equivalent symptom triage solutions that have been through and achieved the accreditation, which demonstrates just how effective our processes are in producing decision support that enables the best possible guidance and advice for patients.”
Gaining this accreditation is testament to the expertise and experience of an in-house clinical team at Advanced, led by Professor Jeremy Dale, Director of the Clinical Knowledge Unit. “The entire Odyssey content is under a permanent state of review to ensure it always reflects best practice and authoritative sources of clinical practice,” said Professor Dale. “In addition, we are committed to ensuring Odyssey reflects the needs of patients, and we are delighted to work with the Patients Association to ensure the way Odyssey asks questions and the advice that it offers is informed by the views of patients and the general public.”
The NICE accreditation process includes rigorous evaluation of the processes used by Advanced to develop and maintain the accuracy of the guidance content. It can be used to inform compliance with DCB0129 – Clinical Safety Risk Management System in the Manufacture of Health Software and DCB0160 – Clinical Safety Risk Management System – Deployment and Use of Health Software.
NICE is an executive non-departmental public body established under the Health and Social Care Act 2012. It provides guidance and advice to support health and social care commissioners, providers and others so care and preventative services are of the best possible quality and offer the best value for money. NICE has a statutory role that encompasses the development of quality standards, advice, information and recommendations about NHS, public health and social care services.
More information on accreditation can be found at http://www.nice.org.uk/about/what-we-do/accreditation.