The NHS Operating Framework for 2008-09 requires that the NHS better listens to patients and for PCTs to make better use of patient experience information recorded. The directive states “Patient experience: to develop robust strategies to ensure year-on-year improvements in reported patient experience and to demonstrate the use of both national and local data of patient experience to inform commissioning decisions.”

Given the increased emphasis on patient experience information, Routine Health Outcomes Limited developed a software solution designed for patients to directly record their experience of the service

Whenever you see your doctor or nurse, they assess how you feel and how much you can do. This can be almost subconscious and is seldom recorded. The application software, howRU makes this explicit, by asking you, the patient, to record this. Health services aim to improve your health and wellbeing, adding life to years and years to life. howRU lets us measure success against this objective on four dimensions:

• Symptoms such as pain (includes discomfort such as breathlessness or nausea)
• Feeling low or worried (includes anxiety, depression and tiredness)
• Limits to what you can do (includes physical incapacity, loss of memory, sight or hearing)
• Dependence on others (reliance on other people or equipment)

Each of these is scored at one of four levels: none, slight, quite a lot and extreme.

Bluewire have been working with Routine Health Outcomes and can now offer their software within the Epro application software.