Internship project: Needs finding to augment a lymphodema management clinical decision support system with automated notes generation functionality

Project Participants

Status: Ongoing

Opportunity

Lymphoedema describes chronic swelling. It is under-recognised, prevalent, and contributes to poor health outcomes. In a given region, fluid normally drained through the body’s lymphatic system accumulates creating tissue changes and leaving the region vulnerable to skin changes and infection. Unmanaged, it is chronic and progressive. Lymbase is a free clinical support system for the management of lymphoedema. It has been developed for clinicians treating lymphoedema with assessment data analysed and displayed in a way to be informative and engaging for their patients. Lymbase collects a significant amount of data to support the management of patients with lymphoedema, with over 11,000 patient consultations entered to date. There is potential to use the data collected by Lymbase to generate: session reports, progress notes, initial assessment reports, referral letters, and clinical handover. Presentation of session reports in a format suitable for My Health Record and eMR is an important part of this undertaking.

The aim of this project is to scope the best solution for automatically generating notes from the data collected in Lymbase. The intern will undertake semi-structured interviews with four end-users of the platform to understand their experiences to date. During the internship, the intern will learn how the platform works and scope possible pathways to operationalise the note generation feature. Cost and barriers/facilitators to uptake will be important considerations. Findings from the project will be used to develop a plan for future development of this new feature.

Project Objectives

  • Scope the best solution for automatically generating notes from the data collected in Lymbase.
  • Understand the experiences of Lymbase end-users with the digital solution.
  • Develop recommendations on how to enhance a digital solution to align with user needs.

Integrity, Excellence,
Teamwork and Authenticity

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