The Balance of Care Group

 

Links

Here’s a selection of links to organisations we have worked with and projects we have worked on.

http://www.kidneypatientguide.org.uk/
We are particularly proud of the Kidney Patient Guide site. Members of the Balance of Care Group developed it in collaboration with Cognitive Applications and staff and patients of Wrexham Maelor Hospital (NE Wales Hospital Trust) following the grant of a ‘Science on Stage and Screen’ award from the Wellcome Trust.

The site is a patient-focused information site for kidney patients and their carers. It is highly innovative in its approach and has developed a strong and supportive online patient community of over 3000 people from around the world who communicate via the site’s bulletin board. It sets high standards among patient information web sites.

http://www.nao.gov.uk
The independent National Audit Office scrutinises public spending on behalf of Parliament auditing the accounts of all central government departments and agencies, as well as a wide range of other public bodies, and reporting on the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of their use of public money.

http://www.dh.gov.uk
The Department of Health, responsible for health policy in England, and whose site gives access to all policy areas and statistics covering health and social care in England.

http://www.nhs.uk
The NHS gateway website which, in turn, provides links to the sites of our NHS clients.

http://www.cogapp.com
Our colleagues at Cognitive Applications were the technical partners in the design of the Kidney Patient Guide website and continue to support its active bulletin board.

http://www.partnersinpaediatrics.org.uk/
Partners in Paediatrics is a clinical collaborative in the north English Midlands centred on Stoke-on-Trent. A version of the Balance of Care model was developed in conjunction with them for planning paediatric gastroenterology service capacity.

http://www.paconsulting.com
We collaborated closely with PA Consulting (Ireland) on the project for the Health Service Executive of Ireland looking at bed usage across all hospitals with A&E departments.

http://www.hse.ie
The HSE provides health services and social services for the people of Ireland.

http://www.kingsfund.org.uk
The King’s Fund is a leading UK charitable foundation working for better health, with a particular focus on London.

http://www.cqc.org.uk
The Commission for Social Care Inspection inspects and reports on care services and councils to improve social care and stamp out bad practice.

http://www.telecarealliance.co.uk/index.html
The Balance of Care Group provides supporting consultancy for the Telecare Alliance which specialises in consultancy and training in all aspects of telecare. It has a very useful free ‘telecare news’ alert service.

 

Academic centres with which we have close links

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/operational-research
The Clinical Operational Research Unit (CORU) is the leading UK centre for the application of in a wide range of clinical areas including cancer, obstetrics, cardiology, cardiothoracic surgery, primary health care, sexually transmitted diseases, intensive care, rheumatology and IT.

http://www.keele.ac.uk/pppp
'The Department of Health Policy & Professional Practice' at Keele University (in Staffordshire, England) is where Paul Forte is a senior lecturer. This is one of the UK’s longest established health management centres with a strong record of teaching, research and development work in the UK and overseas.

http://www.management.soton.ac.uk/ORAHS
The Operational Research Applied to Health Services Working Group is a special interest group under the auspices of EURO (the European branch of the International Federation of Operational Research Societies (IFORS). Members of the Balance of Care Group have been active participants in this group and its annual meetings over many years. Government organisations we have worked with or who are important sources of information and policy.

http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/index.html
The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine is one of Europe’s leading postgraduate teaching and research centres with a particular focus and expertise on distance learning programmes. Paul Forte is a part-time Course Tutor.