DIAGRAMS, Version 3
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Co-Design of an Integrated Diagrammatic Systems Modelling Language (iDSML) to Facilitate Effective Communication and Problem Solving in Healthcare Systems
IRAS ID
182111
Contact name
P. John Clarkson
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
CPFT and The University of Cambridge (Joint Sponsorship)
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 7 months, 23 days
Research summary
This research is about working with managers, clinicians and service users to develop a new way of describing complicated healthcare services. It will help improve our understanding of how services work in order to help managers, clinicians and those involved in service development make decisions that lead to the delivery of better and safer care for patients.
Medical doctors understand how the human body works and can describe all the parts that have to work well together for the whole person to be healthy.
Similarly, engineers understand how a car, for example, works and can describe in detail all the parts that have to work well together for the whole car to be safe and fun to drive.
But when it comes to a healthcare service as a whole, which we refer to as a system, we don’t often have similar understanding of how the various parts have to work together. This is important because healthcare services also have many parts that need to work well together, just like a car or the human body, for the overall quality of care to be acceptable. We often don’t understand the various parts that have to work well together in order for the whole service to deliver quality and safe care. This research aims to develop a new way of describing services using simple diagrams. We hope this will help all those involved in improving a service understand how it works and be able to describe it.REC name
East of England - Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
16/EE/0042
Date of REC Opinion
8 Mar 2016
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion