Effective Practice, Informatics & Quality
Improvement (EPIQ) is an informal group of academics and practitioners working
in the fields of evidence-based practice, informatics and quality improvement at
the University of Auckland. EPIQ was established in 2002 to facilitate effective
(evidence-based) practice, health informatics and quality improvement
initiatives in the health and disability support sectors, regionally, nationally
and internationally.
To date this website has mainly been used
to host a series of
teaching/learning tools to help students and practitioners develop their skills in
evidence-based practice. These tools are based around a simple graphic frame
called the GATE (Graphic Approach To Epidemiology) frame. These tools can be
found on the ‘Evidence Based Practice and CATs’ page and have been extensively
updated in 2013. Our plan is to develop complimentary tools to support clinical
audit and quality improvement in the near future.
The core EPIQ team:
Associate members:
EPIQ Activities
EPIQ members undertake teaching and research that integrates evidence based
practice, informatics and quality improvement. The teaching includes both
post-graduate university courses and workshops designed for current members of
health related professions. The research is mainly undertaken in routine
clinical practice using web-based and other electronic tools to support
evidenced-based practice while simultaneously generating data for research.
A) University teaching programmes
1. Evidence-based practice
- Certificate of Public Health (Effective Practice)
A four course postgraduate certificate including 3 EPIQ courses:
- A course in evidence-based practice for 4th year
medical students
2. Health informatics
3. Quality improvement
- One postgraduate course:
- Two
undergraduate course in quality improvement: a short course in quality
improvement for 5th Year medical students; and a quality improvement project for
6th Year medical students in association with the Department of Obstetrics and
Gynaecology
B) Workshops
EPIQ runs half-day to two-day workshops (on request) in evidence-based practice (critical appraisal) and quality improvement.
C) Research and development
EPIQ is a partner with Enigma Publishing
Ltd in the development of PREDICT, a web-based clinical decision support system
that predicts patients cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk and provides
evidence-based recommendations on how to manage risk. PREDICT is used by several
thousand general practitioners, practice nurses and hospital-based cardiologists
in New Zealand. The PREDICT system is simultaneously a clinical tool for
assessing and managing CVD risk and a research tool that stores a copy of each
patients CVD risk profile. These data are regularly linked to hospitalisations,
deaths drug dispensing and laboratory test results using an encrypted version of
the national health index number, a unique and comprehensive national health
identifier.
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