Simon and I were part of a group sent to iSoft headquarters in Chennai, in the Year of our Lord 2005, when part of our work centred on the incorporation of algorithms into computer protocols for the management of long term conditions. Mike Bainbridge or Kit Lewis might remember the detail, because I certainly don’t, and the team at iSoft seemed to think we were an awkward lot, because we thought their primary care offering for Lorenzo lacked some important functionality. We weren’t asked back after the second of three intended visits, and Lorenzo Primary Care was pulled shortly afterwards.

Regarding the medical device nomenclature, we may have EU law to thank for that – any decision-support application that affects the prescribing process is now defined as a medical device, and if algorithms are at the root of that application, as they often are, then it’s a short step to (incorrectly) refer to the algorithm itself as the device.

Robert

From: GP-UK [mailto:[log in to unmask]');" target="_blank">[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Adrian Midgley
Sent: 19 May 2016 09:52
To: [log in to unmask]');" target="_blank">[log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: formulae and algorithms

The recent use of a published algorithm with source code for cardiac event risk/decision on statin being implemented in a closed source system - wrongly - and the considerable delay before this was noticed is interesting, is it not?

Have a look around for Marcus Baw's efforts on the algorithms and calculators.

There may be one or two in http://ganfyd.org

Feel free to add to that, please.

Describing a mathematical formula as a medical device makes me think people have gone rather mad, but going by TPP's experience and that of their customers, it doesn't seem likely to achieve one of its stated aims.

On Thu, 19 May 2016 at 09:37 Simon Child <[log in to unmask]');" target="_blank">[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Does this jog anyone’s memory?

I remember about a decade ago downloading an NHS spreadsheet of medical formulae and algorithms. The significance of the list was that each of these was stated to be licensed for use within the NHS without needing to individually obtain licensing. Perhaps it included some open-source materials, and perhaps it included some proprietary materials for which the NHS had obtained a license. I can't remember much more about it nor what was in it, but probably it was things like eGFR formulae and much more - as I remember it was quite a long list, a couple of hundred entries.

Of course I now can't find the link, and I can't find the file on my hard disk either. I may have originally heard about this spreadsheet via gp-uk, but I’ve searched the archives and not found anything. I’ve tried googling, but I expect it was nww hosted so not indexed by google.

I don’t actually need it at the moment, but it is niggling me now that I’ve remembered about it and can’t find it :(

Simon Child