An online burns referral system has been designed and produced by Medical Data Solutions and Services (MDSAS.com) on behalf of NHS England and the burn care Clinical Reference Group. It was piloted in Greater Manchester from May 2017 and proved highly successful. Currently, the system is being rolled out nationally. Referrals are submitted online by the referrer using an NHS Net web link, the only requirement being the need to submit an NHS e-mail address. Clinical photographs and x-ray images can be attached to the electronic referral directly or by using a secure NHS-compliant app SiD (Secure Image Data). A short video of the application is available here:
Use of the system has reduced the number of cases transferred for immediate assessment by over 60%.
The system has also been used to allow patients to upload their own wound or scar images post discharge to allow remote monitoring and management.
From a survey of all burn services and contributors to the iBID in 2015 it was clear that there was a desire to have access to the national dataset to allow flexible queries to be applied to national data. It was felt the current series of reports provided were too restrictive.
Support for the National Burn Awareness Day on 19th Oct 2016 had a wide base and the range of activities were impressive. The Children’s Burns Trust (CBT) worked with the British Burn Association (BBA) to grow the momentum and reach an even wider audience exploring ways to work collaboratively with support from, amongst others: Child Accident Prevention Trust, Electrical Safety First, the Government’s Fire Kills campaign and the Chief Fire Officers Association. Many other agencies and charities were also involved in using iBID data to spread the message about the importance of burn injury prevention.
The conference of the Chief Fire Officers Association focused on the development of the Fire and Health initiative, presented by Geoff Harris as vice-chair of the Strategic Health Group. This was supported by evidence from an iBID presentation outlining the methodology for the identification of vulnerable subgroups of the population and the means of monitoring burn injuries in the community.
The second BBA National Burn Awareness Day was held on the 21 October 2015, and again the BBA Prevention Committee thanked iBID for providing site specific information to burn services and national overview of burn injury causation.
A more detailed report of the day is available from:
A presentation was made to the British Association of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons meeting in London concerning the development of a Tele-referral system for burn injuries.
Pilot of an online burns referral system – by: Dr VE Ormston, Mrs C Reade, Mr R Hollingsworth, Mr KW Dunn
Introduction: An online burns referral system has been designed and produced on behalf of NHS England and the burn care Clinical Reference Group. It is being co-developed and piloted in Greater Manchester with the intention of being rolled out nationally. Referrals are submitted online by the referrer using an NHS Net web link the only requirement being the need to submit an NHS e-mail address. Clinical photographs and x-ray images can be attached to the electronic referral.
Material and Methods: The online burns referral system was developed with the software consultancy MDSAS (Medical Data Solutions and Services). It is being piloted within the Greater Manchester region to replace the current system of faxed referrals.
Key results: The benefits of the new referral system include: no requirement for pre-registration of the referrer, it avoids losing faxed referrals thus improving patient safety, confidentiality and security of information. There is improved referral information provided which is clear and typed and imaging sent with the referral will facilitate decision making particularly the need to transfer out of area. Login to the system can occur from any NHS computer and an auditable trail of the referral process is retained.
Conclusion: An online system for the referral of burns patients is being piloted. The system allows electronic referrals with clinical images to be sent by the referrer, without requiring registration of the referrer. The technique is applicable to other specialties where the review of imaging would be of benefit during the referral process.
It was opportune to present iBID data concerning the flame injury problem to the National Fire Sprinklers Network in Derbyshire on the same day as the National Burn Awareness Day 2015. Fruitful discussions were had concerning the utility of burn injury information to support the argument for a widespread use of water sprinklers in domestic residences.
The Fire and Rescue Statistics Users Group asked for a presentation of iBID data to better understand the possibility and utility of combined analysis in order to better understand the burn injury problem beyond the usual statistics produced by the Fires and Rescue Services via the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG).
The first British Burn Association National Burn Awareness Day (NBAD) was held utilising data about each burn services’ activity from iBID provided in a series of reports. Details of the activities are available here: