What is CCCare?

CCCare is designed with the aim to improve patient management and quality of IBD care around Australia and New Zealand, as well as assisting research by enabling better data management.

Some of you may remember completing a questionnaire earlier this year about the design of “CCCare-P”, a brand new, paediatric-specific component of the existing Crohn's Colitis Care (CCCare) Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) management system.

Well, since then, the platform has been built and ‘beta-tested’ by healthcare professionals at four key paediatric care centres across Australia and New Zealand.

So, what exactly is ‘beta-testing’?

Healthcare professionals, including gastroenterologists, nurses, dietitians, administration staff and IBD researchers were all given exclusive access to the new software prior to its release. After watching a short virtual walkthrough video, they were given three different patient-based scenarios, and were asked to document each in CCCare as they would in the real-world. Later, healthcare professionals completed two online questionnaires which assessed usability and user experience respectively.

This process, also known as ‘pre-release testing’ or ‘user acceptance testing’ is common within the software build process, and is vital in uncovering any ‘bugs’ (that is software bugs…not stomach bugs!) or software usability and suitability issues before the software is rolled out internationally for routine clinical use. The main areas that needed tweaking related to the medication entry section, growth metrics, and generating clinic letters. Of note, all suggestions have been recorded and are currently being triaged by the software development team to ensure CCCare is fit-for-purpose for all users. This testing, and the subsequent ‘software tweaks’ are being funded by The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust.

Once all appropriate suggestions have been addressed, we will turn our focus to implementing CCCare at paediatric (and adult) care centres. Keep an eye out, as CCCare could be coming to your care centre soon… in fact, Christchurch Hospital has already started using the software in its paediatric and adult services, which is very exciting, especially for those patients transitioning between services!

Once rolled out, we can start using de-identified data from consenting patients to perform research, such as assessing why some patients respond to medications better than others. All of this helps to achieve Crohn’s Colitis Cure’s charity mission, which is to improve care NOW and work towards finding a CURE in the future. We are so excited to have you on this journey with us and thank you for your support!

Want to learn more about CCCare? Email info@c-c-cure.org

1. Lewis JR. 2018, Int J Hum Comput Interact, doi: 10.1080/10447318.2018.1455307

2. Nielsen J. 1994, ACM CHI'94 Conf, Boston, MA, April 24-28