Transforming Data to Deliver Insights to Clinical Practice Teams

The Scottish Cardiac Audit Programme (SCAP) was established to support delivery of priority 4 of the heart disease action plan to ensure the effective use of data for clinical decision making, understanding patient outcomes and enabling better service planning.

The programme has brought together clinicians, policy teams, analysts, third sector and those with lived experience to develop the measures included within the audit and establish the best way to publish the data. SCAP has strengthened links with analyst and service teams to improve the data quality and consistency, developing new linkages between datasets and providing data collection tools for the clinical teams across hospitals in Scotland.

Data dashboards have also been developed to allow clinical teams to review data in a more dynamic and meaningful way, allowing clinical teams to quickly highlight areas in patient pathways across sectors where improvements could be made to improve outcomes for patients. Strong links with the policy team mean that the audit data can have a direct impact on policy development and in particular on delivery of the heart disease action plan.