Consultant to run register recognised for success
DR Martin Perry is working to bring a world-class arthritis database from Sweden to Scotland.
Dr Perry, who has been based at the Royal
Alexandra Hospital in Paisley since 2011, hopes to have the pilot project up and running from this month in two of Scotland’s largest health boards – NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and NHS Lanarkshire.
The Rheumatoid Arthritis Quality Register pilot is based on a model developed at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden around 20 years ago, which allows patients with rheumatoid arthritis to regularly log their symptoms via a database which links them to their clinicians.
Mr Perry, 42, said: “It allows patients to input information in ways other systems don’t. You can feed into this how you’re feeling whenever you want and this links to the clinicians’ desktop. Patients are more aware of how the condition is progressing and it alerts clinicians if it’s not doing well.”
The Swedish registry is respected for improving patient self-management, as well as providing an insight into patients’ demographic and socioeconomic circumstances.
Mr Perry comes to the project after a two-year secondment at National Services Scotland, where he was part of a working group that helped deliver substantial savings to the NHS drug budget by switching patients from brand-name biologics – effective but expensive medications – to cheaper, but equally effective, alternatives.
The project highlighted a shortage of national data on rheumatoid arthritis patients, which Dr Perry hopes the database will address. He says the database could potentially be used for other conditions too.