App to provide quick access to living guidelines

When he first moved to Australia from his native South Africa two years ago, Dr Reinhardt Verster was met with impracticalities when accessing clinical resources in his daily hospital rounds.
 
‘I’d walk to the computer multiple times a day just to access guidelines, as I couldn’t do that easily through my phone because you either needed access or a password,’ he told newsGP.
 
‘In South Africa, we have an app that contains all hospital and national guidelines, and I can be in any part of the country and open the app to look at guidelines that are closest to me, and use that immediately.’
 
Now, Dr Verster has developed an idea to fill that gap by working with a friend to launch an Australian-first medical app, designed to provide access to a range of relevant clinical guidelines on a phone or tablet.
 
Each guideline posted on the app would be curated and updated by their respective organisation, which has a custom dashboard.
 
‘The aim is to provide updated and living guidelines from various institutions into a singular platform,’ Dr Verster said.
 
‘It’s a problem I’ve run into a lot, in emergency departments and now in general practice, where sources are spread over several platforms and sometimes difficult and time-consuming to find.
 
‘Frequently I feel like as doctors we want simple answers quickly, you’re not going to read extensively in between patient consultations, it’s more about just getting that quick guidance. GPs are very time poor, so it’s just having that quick resource at your fingertips.’
 
After working in emergency medicine for eight years in South Africa, Dr Verster embarked on a general practice career in Australia, starting this month in the RACGP’s Fellowship Support Program as a non-vocationally registered international medical graduate.
 
He has found the problem with easily accessing resources is the same in general practice as in hospitals.
 
Originally aimed at hospital-based doctors, Dr Verster and his partner have now expanded the app’s use to general practice, with the end goal to have guidelines from all reputable organisations for any medical provider to access, which would also be location specific.
 
‘We want to create an app where doctors can access all of their guidelines through the phone, but it’s easily available, it’s fast,’ he said.
 
‘You can do it on your phone or an iPad. Even when you’re standing right next to the patient.’
 
The RACGP’s newly revised Red Book is a standout example he says to have on the app, given it is a frequently used resource.
 
‘For example, if a GP searches for breast cancer screening, it will show up ‘RACGP Red Book breast cancer screening’ and you click on that and have access to that one-pager,’ he said.
 
‘With every separate single-page document in the Red Book, we would have a link to where you can find the full thing, but on the app it’s the short version.’
 
‘The app also has a dashboard for somebody who doesn’t have programming knowledge, they can access that dashboard and input the guidelines, or sections, themselves. And we have a “smart” search function that makes finding and saving “favourites” of the guidelines you use most often.’
 
Dr Verster says the app will help doctors access locally relevant resources, which would be particularly useful for locums and those new to the area.
 
‘For example, I just arrived in Torquay, Victoria, from Perth to work as a GP but I have little knowledge of the surrounding areas,’ he said.
 
‘I would then be able to search “croup” and it would automatically provide the relevant guidelines from the nearest centres like Barwon Health or Geelong Hospital. Similarly, say I do locum shifts at a general practice or hospital in Queensland, I would be able to use their guidelines, or refer back to ones I find easiest to use.
 
‘The same goes for national guidelines like the Red Book.’
 
Because each hospital has its own network and an intranet to access guidelines, Dr Verster says the app will establish hubs where hospitals can easily access all of their guidelines through phone or tablet.
 
His vision is to connect those hubs so that any Ahpra-registered doctor who works for a certain organisation or local agency has access and can open the app and search the local guidelines.
 
‘It’s about saving time, and I noticed there isn’t a thing like that in Australian hospitals and general practices, because I need to continuously login and look for something but I don’t necessarily even find what I’m looking for, so then I have to go to a different source,’ he said.
 
‘Whereas if I had everything in one space and I can just type in what I need, the search function will find the information I’m looking for quicker.
 
‘As a clinician, I use guidelines mostly for finding treatments, but if I just can’t remember the treatment for tonsillitis then I can put that in and quickly have what I need, as well as a list of specific medications.
 
‘It’s an opportunity to disseminate information that is just easier and freely accessible, so it doesn’t have to be behind a pay gate where you need an account or your organisation needs to subscribe.’
 
While the app is built and functioning, it is not yet available for the public. Dr Verster is trialling with the Royal Melbourne Hospital to potentially help launch the app, which currently enables users to search and create new ‘mock’ guidelines to determine its purpose and functionality.
 
For the next step, he is reaching out to obtain permission to use organisations’ guidelines on the app, to reach a win-win negotiation where use of guidelines is increased to support doctors in their daily practice. 
 
‘Ease of access is the ultimate goal,’ Dr Verster said. ‘That’s the simplest concept really.’
 
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