The economics of healthcare

Large publicly funded organisations like the NHS and its blood service need good evidence to make changes. This part of our project examines how electronic systems can help reduce costs to hospitals and free staff to spend more time caring for patients, identifying recommendations which will have the biggest benefit the quickest.

We will work with colleagues at the Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences at the University of Oxford, Queen Mary University London, and Barts Health NHS Trust, to measure the costs associated with different part of the blood supply chain and examine how introducing electronic systems might help reduce these costs.

The economics of healthcare is a complex field and we want to understand not only the obvious cost savings like the time nurses spent cross checking transfusions, but also more complex costs like the time a patient spends in hospital or their chance of needing further care following a transfusion.