The Mental Health Act Code of Practice, 1999 defines consent as, "The voluntary and
continuing permission of a competent patient to receive a particular treatment, based on an
adequate knowledge of the purpose, nature and likely risks of the treatment, including the
likelihood of its success and any alternatives to it". Every person must provide consent prior
to undergoing a surgical procedure. EIDO Healthcare is the only commercial organisation in
the UK specialising in patient information to support the consent process.
Currently, patients are briefed/given information about their surgery and pre/postoperative
care before undergoing surgery but there is no formal method of assessing patient
comprehension or follow-up of the number, type, or occurrence of complications post-surgery.
EIDO propose a novel online platform to measure consent information knowledge,
postoperative data collection, intelligent cause and effect, and solution analysis. EIDO will
work with the Royal College of Surgeons of England and Warrington and Halton, Mid
Cheshire, Homerton and Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trusts. By measuring
patients’ understanding of their surgery, recording of complications and feedback to
hospitals/clinics, the proposed platform will help reduce complication rates leading to better
informed patients and consultants, reduced cost to the NHS, more effective patient recovery
and an evidence based, transparent closed loop reporting system. The current NHS PROMS
platform addresses the postoperative aspects of only 4 key procedures, with a 50% return rate
of questions by participants.
This project is highly innovative as currently there is no closed-loop analysis between a
patient’s understanding of consent information and any resulting postoperative complications,
no means of recording complications that have been resolved (by a GP) and no method of
communicating that feedback to the operating hospital or consultant for improvement.