International links
Taiwan
The collaboration with Taiwan was initiated in April 2008 when Professor Ken N Kuo, Director of the Centre for Health Policy Research and Development, at the National Health Research Institutes and Professor Shou-Hsia Cheng, Director of the Bureau of National Health Insurance within the Department of Health came to visit the Dr Foster Unit and the Department of Primary Care and Public Health to investigate the work being conducted on primary health care.
The success and interest of this initial meeting led to a conference in February 2009 entitled “Contemporary primary health care: perspectives in UK and Taiwan” involving key British and Taiwanese organisations (the Dr Foster Unit, the Department of Primary Care and Public Health, and the Science and Technology division of the Taipei Representative Office in the UK).
In July 2010 the NIHR CLAHRC for Northwest London Collaborative Learning and Delivery event was held at Imperial College, South Kensington which focused on patients and featured several Taiwanese speakers.
The Unit looks forward to further exchanges that are being planned within the department of Primary Care and Public Health.
The US
The development of international comparisons of healthcare performance has been spurred on by Brian Jarman’s continued international work. Professor Sir Jarman has secured significant funding from the Rx Foundation to continue work in US HSMRs.
The Netherlands
Real Time Monitoring (RTM) is distributed in the Netherlands by De Praktijk Index www.depraktijkindex.nl. To date, 20 hospitals in the Netherlands use RTM. Dutch RTM is similar to the UK version and it is envisaged that by mid 2010 the two products will, in essence, be the same. The Dr Foster Unit at Imperial College created the risk model for the Dutch HSMR which is one of the indicators that can be monitored in the tool.
