Bluespier Database

D Selvey, 2005

Some surgeons just seem to produce paper after paper. Every time you attend a local or international meeting invariably it tends to be the same faces that produce the goods. These individuals tend to have an advantage over the rest of us however.  Either they are fastidious by nature and prepared to sit down and invest the time in updating their individual databases, or otherwise they have a fellow or two who enters and analyses the data for them. 

Now there is a system that will give every one of us the opportunity to publicise our experience. Even better than that is, it has the potential to provide multi-centre studies with all data based on the same input of information.

Bluespier International has developed a database that is not just a database.  This system is a practice management system that allows you to manage your practice in the most efficient way imaginable and at the same time without any additional input to produce the data you need to generate research and audit.

Bluespier’s philosophy was to identify each of the normal activities in a surgeons life, simplify each of these tasks such that surgeons want to use their system to conduct their daily activities and in the process capture data that is very easily recorded and analysed.

This starts with a very simple means of scheduling and diarising clinics and operating  lists, with every procedure that is selected, allocated a standard theatre time and in-patient stay and pre-coded so that the surgeon simply chooses the correct procedure and the rest happens in the back ground.

For private users, Bluespier has expanded the process so that you can now run your entire private practice remotely on the Internet accessing your electronic record from anywhere in the world.  Clinical notes and GP letters dictated digitally can be downloaded into the system and uploaded by the secretary working from home or while on holiday in Barbados.

The secretary fires up a pre-designed template for your letter that imports patient and GP demographics (entered just once) into the letter template.  On completion of the typing, the letters appear in a file for checking and once the clinician has checked and validated each letter (done once again from anywhere in the world) the secretary then prints off the letters from her “checked letters” folder.

There are over 1500 surgical procedures pre-templated in orthopaedics alone.  The user simply selects the most appropriate procedure and this automatically generates the relevant data base.  Once you choose an operation the system reads the procedure and presents you a list of diagnosis most relevant to that operation.  The net result is all the procedure codes and diagnosis codes happen in the background and you have the clinical terminology used by you the clinician and not the coding department.

Once you have completed the questions, a legible operation note gets generated.   Users can default their standard procedures so that only a few questions need to be answered on the day.

Severity scores all pre-loaded can be run in the space of seconds and the scores automatically calculated.  Digital video capture is attached to patients’ folders and each patient has a folder that holds each and every document generated that is retrievable at the touch of a button.

Probably the most attractive of the many brilliant features is the ability to individualise the system to suit each individual user.  If you want to insert your own version of your database you can, but on the whole users contribute to a central data base that is upgraded and updated daily according to users requests such that each new idea is shared by all who use the system.

The system captures NJR data automatically and Bluespier is about to launch the NJR/SSI Manager that does bulk upload of NJR and SSI data directly.  Once again you simply complete the operation note questions and the NJR data is extracted and submitted on your behalf.

Registrar logbooks are automatically built from information entered into the system, as are theatre logs.  Discharge summaries are generated automatically, complications captured in the process and users can also view surgeons’ cardex electronically and many other similar features, all designed by an orthopaedic team in response to their experience of running a practice.

Bluespier are currently working on an account management package that will talk to your patient management system and generate you billing automatically. The system will be designed so that it can be customised for international use. Already they have users in the UK, Ireland, South Africa and Australia and are working hard at customising it for the US market as well as exploring opportunities in Hong Kong and the Middle East.  Bluespier recently won a Chamber of Commerce award for Best New Exporter 2005 in the UK.

For more information log onto www.bluespier.com and if you like what you see you can arrange an on-line demonstration of the system.