30 years in the making. Finely tuned for here and now
CRAB Clinical Informatics Ltd. (C-CI) was launched by Stephen Mackenney in summer 2008 with the help of long-standing colleague Mr Graham Copeland. Mr. Copeland is the architect of the POSSUM surgical audit system, now a world-renowned methodology for assessing clinical performance against the expected outcome for the case-mix.
C-CI’s technology delivers state-of-the-art tools for predicting and monitoring clinical outcomes. It builds on nearly 30 years of Mr. Copeland’s research and practice and a dataset of over half a million patient records.
With just under £1,000,000 invested in product development, C-CI’s CRAB system for risk adjusted surgical outcome assessment is in use in a growing number of UK Hospital Trusts and the technology is now being rolled out in other healthcare areas.
In the NHS, Lord Darzi has this year set out a 10 year vision for the NHS which brings clinical quality to the fore with clinicians in leadership roles to drive healthcare development. In parallel, Sir Bruce Keogh has made it clear that mortality rates should ultimately be published for all surgeons. C-CI’s technology uniquely enables this vision by providing sensitive and accurate assessments of quality that are adjusted for case mix. Unless outcome data are properly adjusted to take the difficulty and complications for each case into account, they cannot represent the skill of the clinician. (In fact unadjusted data will often make centres of excellence appear worse than the organisations which refer problem cases to them!)
In line with Lord Darzi’s vision, we are helping healthcare professionals and organisations to demonstrate where they are providing excellent services, and how they are managing safety and quality effectively.The C-CI Team
Stephen Mackenney BA (Hons), MA(Cantab.), Barrister
Chief Executive
Stephen Mackenney graduated in law from Cambridge University and qualified as a barrister with a specialist interest in medico-legal issues. He has since also graduated with first class honours in modern languages. He joined the Department of Health in 1994 and, over ten years, developed national health service policy in a variety of areas including health promotion, pharmacy, general medical services and finance. Latterly, he headed Clinical Quality and Patient Safety and was responsible for developing the current framework of healthcare standards in England. Stephen has also spent time working internationally with the European Commission and the WHO European Regional Office, developing a specialist interest in clinical governance and the quality of the “patient experience”. He has lectured on the subject to governmental and academic audiences in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.
Graham Copeland MB, BS, FRCS, ChM
Medical Director
Graham Copeland is a Consultant General Surgeon, with a special interest in breast and biliary disease as well as an honorary lecturer to the University of Liverpool. He has been a specialist in clinical audit and outcome measures for over twenty years and is a known international authority on the subject. Advising governments around the world on its effective application in medical practice and beyond, he has been an advisor on outcome measures to the Veterans Administration in the USA; clinical audit advisor to the WHO, the German Government and the Spanish Gastroenterological Society; clinical audit advisor to the Caldicott Committee in the UK advising on patient confidentiality and instigator of the Caldicott guardian network; National Clinical Audit Development Director for England and co-chairman of the National Clinical Audit Group; advisor to both the Healthcare Commission and the National Institute of Clinical Effectiveness (NICE) on clinical audit issues; and assessor to the British Journal of Surgery on all articles on outcome measures. Graham is also author of the POSSUM scoring system for surgical audit which for units in well over 30 countries
Antony J Watson
Commercial Support
Antony was educated at the University of Wales and The Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. After a successful career in the British Army and as a commercial pilot, he became an investment banker, rising to senior positions with several financial institutions including UBS, Bankers Trust and Singer and Friedlander. He returned to his native North East in 2001 and since then has been involved in several internet start-ups in health, generally serving as Managing Director. He has also advised widely on IP/branding strategies and on internet disposals.
Stuart Johnson
Finance Support
Stuart is a highly experienced Finance Director and is a qualified Accountant (ACMA). Stuart has worked in several blue chip companies including PK Cussons, Nestle and De la Rue. He also has a wealth of knowledge in start up businesses in the health and care sector having held both company secretary and director roles.
Claire Bale BA (Hons)
Operations Manager
Claire Bale graduated in Human Geography from The University of Leicester, studying a variety of disciplines including cultural geographies, environmental issues and Russia in the modern world. She specialised in the environmental effects of economic development, and retains a great interest in these issues. Since graduating Claire has served as Executive Assistant to the Managing Director and Executive Chair of a healthcare company before joining C-CI as Operations Manager, where she holds a central role in business management and customer relations.
Phillip M Gaffney OBE, MA, PhD
Technical Liaison
Dr Phillip Gaffney is Managing Director of L2S2, C-CI’s key partner in software development and interfacing. Dr Gaffney represents C-CI on a personal level and creates the bridge to delivering detailed technical specifications of unrivalled quality. He graduated in Natural Sciences at Cambridge University and obtained a PhD in Geophysics at the Cambridge Bullard laboratory. He held the post of Research Fellow and Tutor for Industrial Liaison at Churchill College, Cambridge for several years. He has started and successfully grown several scientific and medical instrumentation, electronics and software companies. For several years, he has acted as an advisor to the DTI and DES and in 1997 he was awarded an OBE for services to science and technology latterly, he has founded companies specialising in secure internet communication and specialist software development. Dr Gaffney has also lectured on medical research instrumentation and best practice to medical and academic audiences at international conferences.
Christopher John Smith BSc
Technical Consultant
Chris Smith graduated with first class honours in Electrical and Electronic Engineering. He has held a succession of posts with GEC, Pentyre, Vickers Medical (Medelec), Westinghouse Signals, Securicor Information Systems and Tranmit. More recently, he has been employed as a senior analyst and senior designer at Orange, programme leader at Foldermail and senior technical officer at L2S2. Chris has a robust understanding of many computer architectures and common computer languages and has extensive experience in building and managing software teams to achieve high quality products.
Partnerships
Leading Light Software Services Ltd
Leading Light Software Services Ltd. (L2S2) is C-CI's strategic software engineering partner. Based in Cambridge, L2S2 provide specialist IT and software development services to the healthcare sector. L2S2 have worked with us from the very beginning to mould an IT system which is simple, user-friendly and intuitive to use. They also provide on-going technical and customer support for the CRAB system including all installations into the NHS, and where necessary, on-site or off-site training courses. L2S2 has N3 accreditation as a complex third party with authorisation to access all levels of clinical audit data.
L2S2 has a proven track record for high-volume product development and support. Their team developed Foldermail with funding from DHL and the UK government for secure, tracked and audited transfer of large datasets across IP networks of variable quality.
The team has a wealth of senior professional experience in software engineering, healthcare IT and bespoke interfacing. With this unique background, L2S2 is ideally positioned to provide a range of additional IT solutions to healthcare clients, tailor-made to local needs and compatible with national requirements. Find out more about what L2S2 can do for you.
Prospectus
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The Prospectus team is made up of highly energetic, results-oriented people who want to improve the performance of our client organisations, and who understand the complexities of our specialist sectors.
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