In 2009, Dr DJ Hamblin-Brown published The Meaning of CAREFUL – a book which he challenged managers and leaders of healthcare organisations to pursue the seven qualities of well-managed organisations: Committed, Active, Responsive, Energetic, Focused, Uniform and Leading.
Like so many, DJ had personally seen and been affected by poor communication in healthcare. As a practitioner, he came perilously close to killing a child because of an out-of-date insulin protocol. And as a patient, he experienced his past medical history being inaccurately recorded during a pre-op assessment.
The idea for the book was born out of experience as a relative, when a hospital nearly killed his mother. The failure of care was the direct result of a clinical team forgetting a simple action (in this case a fluid-balance chart). It resulted in several months of disability and a near-death experience for a patient who was normally fit and well.
The realisation that a simple lapse – the failure to handover a basic clinical task – can so easily kill a patient was the catalyst that led DJ to develop the CAREFUL platform.
Frustrated by the inadequacy, poverty and poor design of the systems available to healthcare practitioners, he set out to create a platform that would revolutionise transitions of care and dramatically improve patient safety.
Founded in 2017, today CAREFUL, a Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub Partner, is backed by Artesian, The Pension SuperFund as well as Brinc. Our experienced team of clinicians and technologists from every corner of the globe are united by a shared goal: to ensure the right care is provided at the right time to the right patient, every time.
