Training Site Accreditation made easy for ANZ College of Anaesthetists
Summary
The Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists (ANZCA) is the professional organisation for over 6000 specialist anaesthetists (Fellows) and 1500 anaesthetists in training (trainees). The Training Accreditation Committee (TAC) is responsible for ensuring that facilities providing training for trainees of the College are accredited.
Goals and Challenges
In 2014/15 ANZCA engaged Revium to design and implement an online Training Site Accreditation (TSA) system to manage information relating to the accreditation of training sites. Up to that time the accreditation process was mostly a manual process, capturing data in Excel, writing reports in Word and storing these files together with related documents in a file system.
The following objectives were identified for the solution:
Provide single, central repository of all information relating to the accreditation of training sites
Provide a web based, robust and sustainable system
Provide flexibility to allow changes to data sheets and questions
Support multiple stakeholders with user roles and permissions
Integrate with iMIS membership system and pre-load data where possible
During the discovery phase Revium and ANZCA worked through the following challenges:
System must be intuitive to use for a diverse range of users
System must be secure, i.e. authenticated users can only access information related to their role and/or training site.
System must be able to operate in environment with poor internet connectivity
Multiple users must be able to access an accreditation record at the same time without interfering with each other
iMIS is the source of truth for training site details, contact details of training site staff
Cost – benefit of flexibility and scalability
Solution
Revium designed and implemented a fit for purpose web application to suit the ANZCA accreditation process. Considerable time was spent on working through the user interface, the functional requirements and the various options for scalability.
A UX specialist and designer prepared interactive prototypes of the key screens, which were reviewed and validated with stakeholders. The system was built in .NET C# based on the .NET Membership framework. The foundation release covered the following features:
Responsive design to allow user to access system via tablets
Dashboards specific to user types
Multiple step form covering a large number of questions of various types for both training site user and visitor.
Workflow to manage accreditation records to completion via several users and statuses.
File upload facility with complex permissions for view, edit and deletion of files
Interface with iMIS to obtain data re contacts, users, training sites, training site personnel, rotations and accreditation duration
Auto save to ensure minimum loss of data when internet connectivity is lost
Locking of form sections to allow multiple users accessing an accreditation record at the same time.
Capability to maintain question labels, descriptions and help text
Audit logging each time an accreditation record is created or updated
Reports and data download
In 2016 the system was extended with a Recommendations module to streamline the process of providing feedback and requirements for improvement to training sites.
Outcome
ANZCA has received a lot of positive feedback from users of TSA. Users rate the user interface highly and are delighted to have all information at hand via a tablet instead of a large amount of printed paper. Managing accreditations has become a lot easier and less time consuming for all parties involved, administrators, training site staff, inspectors and committee members. The system assists ANZCA in delivering an accreditation process that is structured, consistent and transparent. Data captured not only supports individual accreditations, but also provides a source for management data and further automation of the accreditation process, such as scheduling.
