MedShr: improving patient care through clinical case discussion

Abstract

Case discussion is an essential part of clinical practice and medical education, and as part of patient care takes place both informally between medical staff and formally in case conferences and other meetings. Case presentations are often the most popular sessions at medical congresses and increasingly have moved to digital channels and social media. MedShr was developed to help doctors improve patient care: to empower doctors to use their own smartphones to share and discuss clinical cases, whilst protecting patient privacy and confidentiality. In this manuscript, we review the current climate of digital and social media networks used for clinical case discussion, and outline the importance of moving to a dedicated digital platform. We discuss the common drivers for digital case discussions which include multidisciplinary team groups, diagnostic doubt, new techniques, clinical equipoise and debate and case discussion amongst professionals from different training levels and specialties. One key observation is that if clinical guidelines and published evidence tell doctors what to do, case discussion shows them how to do it in terms of drugs, devices, procedures, techniques, and applying the evidence to individuals or patient groups. We explore how MedShr works and the range of features which promote professional compliance, protect privacy and enable case-based education. We also discuss example cases, case series and discussion themes from MedShr. In summary, the MedShr platform provides a trusted, secure environment for clinicians that uses state of the art social network technology to support case discussion whilst protecting patient privacy and confidentiality.