Assuric in Action: How Patient Care Locally (PCL) Made DCB0160 Work at Scale
See how Patient Care Locally used Assuric to manage DCB0160 clinical safety across 11 GP practices and 100,000+ patients - with one shared hazard log, less duplication, and stronger governance.
A few weeks ago, we sat down with Dr Rowan Sil, Digital Lead at Patient Care Locally (PCL) and Chief Clinical Information Officer at NHS Leicester, Leicestershire & Rutland. We spoke about their recent regional deployment of a patient triage platform across multiple GP practices.
The project highlights how shared clinical safety workflows can reduce duplication and improve governance when deploying digital health tools across multiple organisations.
Hear Rowan's key takeaways from the project below ↓
Managing DCB0160 Across Multiple GP Practices
Deploying digital health technologies across multiple organisations can create significant clinical safety challenges.
For NHS organisations introducing new digital tools, meeting mandatory DCB0160 clinical safety requirements often requires substantial time, resource, and Clinical Safety Officer (CSO) capacity.
DCB0160 is the NHS standard requiring health organisations to systematically identify, assess, and manage the clinical safety and potential clinical risks of deploying health IT systems. Read more about DCB0160 here.
In this project, PCL was supporting the rollout of a patient triage system across several GP practices within their ICB.
Here are some of the key numbers:
Common DCB0160 Challenges for GP Practices and ICBs
A key challenge highlighted in our discussion with Rowan was how fragmented the traditional DCB0160 and Clinical Risk management approach can be.
“Managing digital clinical safety within one organisation is already challenging. Scaling that across multiple practices adds another layer of complexity. If we were to do it individually, it brings that added duplication of effort and work.”
In many cases:
- The same risks are assessed repeatedly
- Hazard logs are recreated multiple times
- Learning is not shared between organisations
All creating duplicated work and siloed efforts for deploying the same tool.
A Collaborative Approach to DCB0160
Rather than each practice managing clinical safety work in isolation, Assuric enabled organisations involved in the deployment to collaborate around shared risks and safety processes.
As Rowan explained:
“What the Assuric platform allowed us to do was to bring many practices together that were trialling the same piece of software… which had the same safety risks.”
Using Assuric, practices were able to work from:
- A shared hazard log with version control and auditability
- Shared visibility of risks, mitigations, and controls
- Consistent safety documentation across deployments
- Flexibility to capture local context where required
This created a more scalable and consistent approach to managing DCB0160 across multiple deploying organisations.
Read more about the collaboarative approach in our full case study below 👇
Clinical Safety at Scale
One of the major challenges highlighted during the project was the limited time and CSO resource available to support clinical safety work across multiple deployments.
Assuric supported PCL with additional clinical safety expertise, helping teams manage safety processes more efficiently and with greater oversight.
How Assuric Supports DCB0160 Clinical Risk Management
We recently broke down exactly how Assuric helps NHS organisations complete DCB0160 more efficiently and collaboratively.
Centralised hazard management
Identify, manage, and share DCB0160 clinical risks across multiple GP practices and NHS organisations from a single centralised hazard log, while still allowing for local controls and context-specific mitigations.
Collaborate across teams
Enable GP practices, Integrated Care Boards (ICBs), Clinical Safety Officers (CSOs), and suppliers to collaborate in real time with shared visibility of clinical risks, controls, mitigations, and deployment progress.
Structured DCB0160 workflows
Simplify complex DCB0160 clinical risk management processes with structured workflows that help NHS teams complete clinical safety activities more consistently and efficiently.
Improved Clinical Safety Oversight and Governance
Provide system-wide visibility of clinical risks, hazard logs, and safety cases to support stronger governance, better oversight, and more consistent clinical safety management across deployments.
Streamlined DCB0160 Documentation and Sign-Off
Capture real-world feedback, manage incidents, monitor patient safety risks, and continuously improve clinical safety processes throughout the lifecycle of a digital health deployment.
By combining collaboration, automation, and Clinical Safety expertise Assuric enables organisations to deliver DCB0160 in a way that is scalable, efficient, practical, and compliant across multiple deployments.
Get in touch to find out more ⤵
