In January 2001, Health Minister John Denham announced the
investment of £200million to modernise NHS decontamination and
sterilisation facilities. This move was the latest stage of
the Department of Health's strategy to minimise the threat from
variant Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (vCJD).
John Denham said: "The money I am
announcing will fund a major advance in the modernisation of
decontamination services in the NHS. The most up-to-date equipment
and new standards will apply to those surgical procedures at
greatest risk of exposure to variant CJD. We are taking these
precautions to ensure that patients are protected against this
theoretical risk."
Following a comprehensive review of it's procedures, NHS decided
to develop a detailed web-based risk assessment and management
information system for use throughout the United Kingdom. Interragate
were appointed to design and implement the new system code-named
DORIS.
DORIS is:
- A nationwide database of all decontamination facilities
- A national reporting system
- A risk assessment system
- An action plan modelling system
- An intelligent guidance system
DORIS allows:
- Health Trust managers to identify risk hot-spots and to
create scenarios that solve the problems they find.
- Action plans to be created and compared for effectiveness
and cost.
- Trusts with underused resources to be identified and used
to compensate for those that are stretched.
- National and regional managers to see at a glance the risk
hotspots over a wide area and to prioritise resources accordingly.
Exapia used to provide Intelligent Guidance:
One of the big problems that Interragate has help to solve
is to give managers immediate, intelligent access to the variety
of constantly changing regulations and guidance about decontamination
during the process of action planning.Exapia is used to keep
track of these documents and, in the context of a certain type
of action, to provide the exact guidance relevant to that action.
