Digital Pioneer: GP Nazmul Akunjee

Nazmul Akunjee is a GP at West Green Surgery. He appears twice in the list of DigitalHealth.London’s Digital Pioneers list: once in the Innovation category, and once as a Pioneer for Sustainability through Digital.

Through his practice, Nazmul developed 7 “digital colour care plans”. These care plans aim to improve chronic care patients’ understanding of their health, and reduce avoidable A&E attendances or hospital admissions. Each plan is automatically updated with the patient’s clinical records, and can be easily shared electronically with other local community services. The clinical templates offer evidence-based diagnostic and management guidelines and permit standardisation of care between clinicians.

“East Haringey has one of the highest A&E admissions and attendances, which is often attributed to patients’ poor understanding of their clinical conditions due to language barriers,” explains Nazmul. “We felt digital care plans, which represent a shift from reactive hospital admissions for unscheduled care to an anticipatory approach, will ensure higher quality and better experience.”

Nazmul’s practice team also used a series of digital initiatives to reduce the inappropriate prescribing of antibiotics.

“There is a national drive to reduce inappropriate antibiotic prescribing due to increasing bacterial drug resistance, “ Nazmul says, “This is compounded by the low-rate of discovery of new antibiotics.”

The solution presents a system of pop-up alerts informing clinicians of the number of times the patient has been issued with an antibiotic over the past year, using clinical templates based upon NICE guidelines. “We created and launched personalised antibiotic prescribing leaflets, using patient records which were translated into numerous languages to help improve understanding of why antibiotics may not be appropriate. Care plans can be personalised with the patient, saved in the clinical records and shared with other staff regarding the advice given. The digital nature of the project also reduces the time spent writing care plans by hand and saving into patient records.”