Dashboards in neonatology

Christopher Flannigan¹, Una Toland², Martina Hogan<sup>2

1</sup>Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children, ²Craigavon Area Hospital, Neonatal Unit, Northern Ireland

Abstract: A clinical dashboard is defined as a toolset of visual displays developed to provide clinicians with the relevant and timely information they need to inform daily decisions that improve quality of patient care. The use of clinical dashboards in the National Hospital Service (NHS) is not a new concept, but it is one that has not been widely adopted throughout neonatology in the United Kingdom. The underuse of dashboards was also noted by the NHS Next Stage Review in 2008. It advocated for the development of dashboards in all clinical areas stating: “Our goal is that every provider of NHS services should systematically measure, analyze, and improve quality. They will need to develop their own quality frameworks, combining relevant indicators defined nationally, with those appropriate to local circumstances”. In this article we outline the advantages to be gained by using dashboards to display information compared to using more traditional methods, using our own neonatal dashboard in Craigavon Hospital as an example.

Keywords: dashboards, neonatology