A completely serendipitous encounter on a bus led to a fascinating conversation about the Map of Medicine with one of its inventors.  The original idea came from the Royal Free, and is part of the Connecting for Health programme, but it is now being developed commercially (though apparently costs to HMG are zero, because of the origin).  Essentially it’s a structured best practice guide for doctors:  it’s not a tool for diagnosis, but picks up after that point, and guides the clinician on what to do.  Currently it covers 250 ‘patient journeys’ (itself a phrase which resonates with our channels thinking), and the idea is that it can be updated to reflect the latest approaches and research, rather than having to rely on the distribution of paper with the hope that it is read, filed and remembered.

The parallels with the guidance given to our staff is obvious:  it would be interesting to establish whether the underlying engine is sufficiently generic to support decision-support tools for our business.