The Integrated Monitoring System (IMS) was recognised as a shortlisted finalist in the ‘Best example of advancing local NHS systems for innovation’ category at the 2015 North West Coast Research and Innovation Awards. The North West Coast Research and Innovation Awards is a collaborative celebration event between the North West Coast Academic Health Science Network, and CRN: North West Coast.
IMS Online is a complete web based solution for services to record activity not covered by the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System (NDTMS) dataset such as brief intervention, recovery support and syringe exchange provision. Developed by a specialist team within Liverpool John Moores University’s Centre for Public Health, it complies with national recommended standards and provides a comprehensive suite of reports which agencies are able to use to monitor performances and activity and which can be accessed in aggregated form by local public health commissioners and other designated professionals.
Types of services currently using IMS:
Needle and Syringe Programmes: IMS Online provides a complete solution to syringe exchange services with an online web based tool for data capture which captures every information field as recommended by the 2014 NICE guidelines including demographics, equipment distributed and returned, wellbeing, outcomes and testing data. With a live visual representation of return rates over the last six months and the lifetime of the client’s contact with your service, prompting for assessments after a specified period of time and a full suite of reports for any given time period – plus the ability to generate an individual client level report. IMS Online is already utilised in numerous syringe exchange services.
Low Threshold Drug and Alcohol Services: IMS Online allows services who deliver low threshold brief interventions or extended brief interventions to service users to record their activity in a similar way to NDTMS but recording details of every intervention, along with demographic information, a TOP-like assessment form and wellbeing information based on the widely used WEMWBS scale. A full suite of reports is available for any given time period including activity, demographics and wellbeing reports – or you can generate an individual client level report with a summary of all information held on the client and any recent activity.
Non-Specific Support Services: IMS has been utilised by services dealing with but not specialising in drug and alcohol use, allowing them to report on client groups potentially affected by drug and alcohol use while not exclusively so – services which offer things like housing support or family help. So long as the client’s attributors (initials, date of birth and gender) are recorded along with the date of any intervention, the tool can be used to record all kinds of activity from different kinds of services.