Custom templates

This page introduces custom template functionality, allowing individuals to save their own templates within Concentric. It outlines the functionality’s benefits, how it works, and future improvements planned.

What are custom templates?

‘Custom templates’ is our name for new functionality that allows clinicians to save and update their own templates within the Concentric application while maintaining continued access to Concentric templates. By some margin, ‘custom templates’ was our most requested feature during 2022 and 2023, and we’re delighted to be ready to add the functionality. Some healthcare organisations are now live with custom templates, with the others going live over Autumn 2024.

Video guide

This is a training video on using custom templates within Concentric - explaining how to create, save, and update your own consent templates, and how to use a custom template to create a consent episode.

What are the benefits of custom templates?

Custom templates bring several benefits for clinicians and deploying teams in terms of ease of use, implementation, and improving quality.

It is a clinician’s responsibility to ensure that consent information is appropriate for their practice and, at a consent episode level, appropriate for the individual patient. Custom template functionality allows a clinician to use a different template than the Concentric template if there are legitimate reasons for variation — for example, in the presence of individual surgeon outcome data.

Whilst the Concentric ontology (i.e. the Concentric consent templates) is the largest of its kind, there are still gaps within certain sub-specialties and a delay in adding new treatments and procedures as they are clinically introduced. In these circumstances, consent episodes have historically been created from blank within Concentric. Creating these these from blank feels cumbersome compared to using a Concentric template, and the quality of content written by the clinician often slips over repeated use of a blank template for the same treatment. With custom templates, clinicians are incentivised to create a high-quality template once, which can be used repeatedly in these scenarios.

We anticipate that custom templates will significantly ease the challenge of introducing Concentric across an organisation by reducing the impact of content gaps and increasing flexibility in managing conflicting requests or a lack of consensus. It will still be possible to request organisation-wide content updates in the same way, as per the process for consent template updates.

How does the functionality work?

Custom templates are managed within a new section of the application and then accessed alongside existing Concentric templates when creating a consent episode.

Summary of workflow

The individual’s list of custom templates is accessed via the ‘custom templates’ link in the account menu.

Creating a custom template

‘New template’ creates a template with the same information domains as an existing Concentric template — much like creating a consent episode from ‘blank’.

Editing a custom template

Created custom templates can be viewed, edited, or deleted at any time by selecting them within the custom template list.

Using a custom template

Custom templates are selected for use within the usual episode creation flow, from a new custom templates section (shown if the user has at least one custom template).

Are there things to be cautious of?

We know that for some, the idea of clinicians being able to save their own templates can be concerning, particularly in the context of aiming to reduce inappropriate variation in the consent process. We understand these concerns, have considered them at great length over the last couple of years, and are confident that this added functionality will improve rather than decrease consent process quality.

Notably, the functionality within custom templates replicates what is already available for creating a consent episode from blank. Episodes created via a custom template have the same requirements in terms of completing specific elements, such as the risk profile, the purpose for treatment, and a description of the treatment. As described above, we expect that episodes created via custom templates will generally be of higher quality than those created from blank, as is currently required in some scenarios.

We understand that organisations may have concerns around poor quality templates being used at significant volumes by an individual and the potential for loss of standardisation across the organisation. Mitigations for template quality and inappropriate variation mostly come down to training and professional good practice – as is currently the case with ensuring a consent episode is appropriate for the individual patient. Templates should continue to be completed to a standard that supports informed consent, and should be appropriately modified to the particular context, without introducing unwarranted variation.

We can support the organisation with audit tools to ensure that training and professional good practice mitigations are managing the risks appropriately. We can share details of all custom templates saved within the organisation, as well as details such as the percentage of consent episodes created from custom templates and when templates were last updated by the author.

What future improvements are planned?

We expect that custom templates will be a popular addition for many clinicians and project teams and will spark several follow-up requests for iteration and improvement. We are keen to learn from feedback and usage data of the initial version of custom templates to guide our priorities for further development.

Anticipated priorities include the ability to:

• use an existing Concentric template as the basis for a custom template, rather than a ‘blank’ starting point,
• share a custom template for use by different individuals within an organisation, and
• add custom URLs as additional resources rather than only those searchable within Concentric (The process of adding these to Concentric so that they can be searched within custom templates is straightforward, but needs to be continued via the Concentric support team initially).

We’re keen to hear your feedback. Please do so via the ‘Give feedback’ link within the application or via the contact page.