Dexter: untapping the value of Real World Evidence
Dexter was founded in 2022 to commercialise a software originally developed to help scientists sift through anonymised data to conduct observational studies, where researchers follow groups of people over a period of time, without any intervention.
Observational studies are used to generate hypotheses that can be fully tested in randomised trials – which test the effectiveness of an intervention. But they can also be used to generate associations, such the connection between smoking and lung cancer (where it would be unethical to conduct a trial) or identify ‘at risk’ groups within a population.
These types of studies use Real World Evidence, and Dexter’s first product – DexterRWE – was developed to automate the previously labour-intensive task of data cleaning and extraction, saving months of researcher time.
DexterRWE has now assisted in more than 130 scientific peer-reviewed studies. These have identified risk factors associated with heart disease, dementia, respiratory disease, and many other life-threatening conditions.
DexterRWE can also be used to identify inequalities in healthcare, alerting healthcare providers to patient groups that need specific attention, and ultimately allocating healthcare resources to meet those with the greatest need.
In the future, Dexter plans to extend the use of DexterRWE to look at other sets of ‘big data’ in crime, social care, and mental health care, to alert healthcare providers to patient groups that need specific attention, and ultimately allocate healthcare resources to meet those with the greatest need.
We set out to unlock the potential of Electronic Health Records and show a complete picture of health at a population-wide level, and we wanted to make this collective, anonymised data readily available to scientists and healthcare professionals. Our challenge was to deliver software solutions with the highest levels of automation, that are faster, more transparent, and secure.
Although Dexter was conceived to generate Real World Evidence, the founders quickly recognised the software could also be used to inform better hospital care through quality improvement programmes.
With that in mind, they launched a second product DexterCare, which allows healthcare professionals to automate clinical audits, which use patient data to establish if care is up to standard.
DexterCare is a specialised solution designed for healthcare providers. It can perform tasks that would have taken weeks, in seconds. By freeing up the time currently consumed by lengthy data collection, it enables hospitals that might have only audited 100 case notes, to do all of them – providing a more comprehensive picture, and empowering staff to undertake rapid, data-driven quality improvement and audit.
Moreover the software is federated, assuring patient confidentiality and compliance with all data protection regulations, and patient confidentiality is assured.
DexterCare has been trialled within the NHS, where it has streamlined clinical audits in maternity care, and will soon be piloted in further acute care settings.
Dexter is also partnering with international data providers to make their data more accessible. Here Dexter software has been used in projects studying Covid-19 and the incidence of hypertension.
Further product development is underway, including a suite specifically for clinical trials, that automates the identification of patients suitable for clinical trials and in some cases being able conduct automated trial emulation.