The eConsult Clinical Governance Process: Putting patient safety first

How we make sure that eConsult & eTriage are the most clinically safe products they can be:

eConsult was built by NHS clinicians to help NHS clinicians and healthcare professionals manage and care for their patients in increasingly demanding environments. Patient safety is of paramount importance to us so we have built, and maintain, a clinical governance team that is second to none in the online consultation market. This team is made up of over 26 NHS specialists from across a wide range of backgrounds. Our experience of working in healthcare is what defines and drives us, which is why half of our Executive Team are practising clinicians.

Clinical Governance team

Our clinical governance team meets fortnightly to create clinically-validated questions that are reviewed and consistently updated to ensure that patient safety is at the forefront of both eConsult and eTriage.

With our founders having come from an NHS based clinical background we have designed our templates to mirror the kind of questions a medical professional would ask their patients to determine what is wrong. Each question has dependencies and further questioning depending on the response. This allows for a consistent and thorough clinical history take that ensures that critical conditions are picked up quickly.

Who creates the content?

Within our governance team, we have:

  • Adult & Paediatric Emergency, Critical & Acute Care Consultants
  • Major Trauma & Acute General Surgery Consultants
  • Air Ambulance Paramedics & Consultants
  • Anaesthesia Consultants
  • Clinical Pharmacists & ED Matrons
  • Liaison Psychiatrist Consultants
  • Prosthodontics Specialists
  • Partner, Portfolio & Salaried GPs
  • Product Manager
  • Patient representatives

How do we create clinical content and templates to ensure patient safety?

From start to finish every new template follows the same rigorous and robust creation and sign-off process to ensure eConsult and eTriage are both safe and effective. Once the template has been signed off and goes live, it will then be monitored and reviewed yearly as a minimum to make the template more efficient in taking the needed clinical history and safer to ensure any other symptoms are included. Every template will undergo at minimum a yearly update, however, if any new NICE guidance is updated then our content gets updated accordingly.

  1. Every condition template is first drafted by a clinician
  2. The template is reviewed by the governance board (minimum of 6 people, chaired by the eConsult Medical Director or the Clinical Director for Urgent and Emergency Care
  3. The template is edited and approved by the governance board
  4. The template undergoes our plain English language check
  5. The template is sent back to the clinical governance board for a final review
  6. The template is built into the product by our development team
  7. A clinician signs off the template before it is made live
  8. The live template will then be under constant review