^[1]The following SMART 100 profile and the information it contains is a duplication of content submitted by the applicant during the entry process. As a function of entry, applicants were required to declare that all details are factually correct, do not infringe on another’s intellectual property and are not unlawful, threatening, defamatory, invasive of privacy, obscene, or otherwise objectionable. Some profiles have been edited for reasons of space and clarity. More about the SMART 100 ^[2].

This innovation initially came to life when…

… I read a book about how surgeons can do better. If medical doctors measured treatment results and received feedback about it, their patients did a lot better compared to patients who had treatment by doctors who did not audit themselves. I am a gynaecological cancer surgeon and responsible for the lives of a large number of women. The idea “how we can do better” is the passion of my life. I developed SurgicalPerformance mostly for myself and the thousands of medical doctors around the globe to enable them to provide better treatments for their patients and become better doctors.

WHAT & HOW

The purpose of this innovation is to…

… provide confident, measurable, and specific feedback to medical doctors about the outcomes of treatment (complications, survival, etc.) and to enable them to compare their outcomes with the outcomes of their colleagues in their country and worldwide.

It does this by…

… using the Internet as a resource. A medical doctor enters de-identified patients’ treatments and outcomes in a web database. Other doctors serve as controls for benchmarking. SurgicalPerformance produces life, web-based outcome reports about complication rates and survival percentages. Only the user will see her/his individual results but the outcomes of the other doctors will be displayed for benchmarking.

PURPOSE & BENEFITS

This innovation improves on what came before because…

Simply, there is nothing even similar available in Australia.

Its various benefits to the customer/end-user include…

The benefit to my customers (medical doctors) is that for the first time they are able to see how well they do compared to other doctors. By auditing their practice, they will become better doctors, which should benefit their patients.

COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE

In the past, this problem was solved by…

In the past, the fact that auditing and providing feedback about medical outcomes improves patients’ treatment outcomes was not recognised. Most doctors in Australia do not undergo auditing at present and do not know what their treatment outcomes are.

Its predecessors/competitors include…

Professional medical organisations sometimes create old-fashioned, regional databases and report treatment outcomes back to their doctors by mail. Unfortunately, participation in these programs often is mandatory and participating doctors feel watched and sometimes do not enter all (especially bad) results.

TARGET MARKET

It is made for…

SurgicalPerformance is primarily made for professional medical societies in all possible fields and their member doctors (specialists or general practitioners) who are motivated to provide the best service to their patients. Currently we have modules available for gynaecologists and obstetricians, urologists and bowel cancer surgeons. Medical societies could profile themselves as leading in patient care. SurgicalPerformance would also be perfectly located within public or private hospitals. We have shown that one surgeon who performs only 20 bowel cancer operations per year would save the hospital or the government between AU$ 25,000 and AU$ 50,000 in just one year.

DISTRIBUTION STRATEGY

It is available for sale through…

SurgicalPerformance is available by subscription on our website surgicalperformance.com.

Our marketing strategy is to…

… inform medical professional societies who do not offer audit programs for their members as yet or who use old-fashioned databases about the enormous benefits of audit in respect to better feedback to doctors, better treatment outcomes and improved survival chances for cancer patients. The fact that I am a cancer surgeon myself sometimes lends weight to the arguments.

SHOW YOUR SUPPORT FOR THIS INNOVATION

While the judging is now officially over, you can still show your support for this innovation in one of the following three ways:

1. Hit the VOTE UP button: Top left of each page (Not available for IE users)
2. Trigger a Reaction: Re-Tweet, Like on Facebook, etc.
3. Leave a Comment: Share the love!

To check out the Anthill SMART 100 Readers’ Choice winner for 2010, click here ^[3].