Soumia Meiyappan, Manager, LHS
Women’s College Hospital (WCH) is on the journey to becoming a Learning Health System (LHS). This is a model in which we will foster a culture of curiosity and engagement where everyone at Women’s College Hospital is continuously asking thoughtful questions about our current processes, delivery, and outcomes to determine if and where we are adding value and then to assess how we can work together to effect improvements.
In August 2023, WCH launched an LHS Steering Committee comprising scientists, clinicians, and operational leaders from the hospital. The purpose of this committee is to create a shared vision of an LHS across WCH by engaging with staff, clinicians, patients, and the community we serve. We are also looking at other institutions to understand how they became a learning health system and the lessons we can learn from them.
In 2024, we invited two Experience Advisors (EAs) to join our LHS Steering Committee. The role of the EAs on this Committee thus far has been to provide feedback and input on ideas and projects.
Our approach to building an LHS at WCH is to “start small and then build out.” In other words, we hope to focus on one area at a time, learn from that experience, and then bring that learning to other areas. One of the areas benefiting greatly from EA input is the development of “pilot” projects, which are ways of testing out different ideas. For example, one pilot idea is to look at patient questionnaires, where data is collected directly from patients without potentially subjective interpretation by clinicians (known as patient-reported outcome measures, or “PROMs”) that could be used across different departments at the hospital.
The impact of having EAs input is already evident, even at this early stage. One key area concerns the notion of survey fatigue, which we need to consider as we investigate PROMs. As patients move across WCH, they may receive the same, if not similar, surveys, which can be overwhelming. Our EAs have shared that several surveys seem perfunctory, highlighting the apparent disconnect between the questionnaire and the care they have received. They are helping us think of ways to ensure we do not create any additional burden for patients by organically integrating these into patient flow or the process patients go through during their entire healthcare journey. They have also highlighted the importance of communicating to patients what we are doing with this information and how it is connected to their care and informing care delivery.
We are confident that connecting with and involving our EAs in an ongoing manner will continue to make an impact on how we develop our LHS at WCH.