Effective Practice, Informatics & Quality Improvement

EPIQ has created a series of teaching/learning tools to help students and practitioners develop their skills in evidence-based practice. They are based around a simple graphic called the GATE (Graphic Approach To Epidemiology) frame that we have developed. The Excel workbooks are updated every few years as a result of feedback from users. You can download the latest versions of the GATE workbooks or see EPIQ presentations and papers. 

Research and development

Members of the EPIQ collaboration have partnered with Enigma Solutions 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. The EPIQ-Enigma group has also developed a related web-based quality improvement programme called the All NZ Acute Coronary Syndrome (ANZACS) programme. ANZACS collects detailed data on patient status and management following admissions to hospitals for acute coronary events throughout New Zealand.

The research component of PREDICT and ANZACS are the basis of the University of Auckland-led Vascular risk Informatics using Epidemiology and the Web (VIEW) research programme. Patient data from PREDICT and ANZACS are regularly linked to hospitalisations, deaths drug dispensing and laboratory test results using an encrypted version of New Zealand's National Health Index (a unique and comprehensive national health identifier). 

Please contact Rod Jackson if you have any questions