The Challenge

The Medical Exposure Group have been tasked with setting up a new national incident learning system, that will collate radiation incidents from clinical imaging providers across the UK.

The radiation incidents involving patients, are recorded on various local incident reporting systems. These incident records include the nature of the incident and potential reasons for it happening.

The intention of this project was to design a database that could take in multiple sources of incident information from around the UK and present them in a clear, searchable way so that this data could be validated, cleansed and viewed. The data could then be exported for summary analysis to identify national trends and share learning with the clinical community through UKHSA publications.

The Approach

ap16 facilitated workshops with the MEG to identify their requirements and to map out typical user journeys. We worked collaboratively to create the proposal to ensure that we were meeting their exact requirements.

ap16 proposed the development of a browser-based system which would manage the importing of data. This tool would enable data cleansing in the event of duplications or incomplete rows. The user could view the data and make corrections. The system would also highlight if the file had already been processed and notify the user so that they can take remedial action.

ap16 developers developed the system incrementally to enable a dynamic response to user feedback and testing

Our Solution

When MEG receive anonymised radiation incident data from national institutions these can be imported into the MEG ILS system. Erroneous data or duplicate data is highlighted to the user. This data can then be cleansed to remove any errors or duplications before it is mapped into the corresponding data fields.

ap16 met the need for MEG to easily run and export predefined reports, when required. These reports can be exported in the form of Excel spreadsheets allowing further organisation, interrogation and analysis of the data.

The Future

We are commencing work to support and refine the database as we continue to partner with the MEG. These tasks will include refinement of the report templates within the system and additional features around the import and mapping functions. We will continue to work with them in a responsive way to meet future requirements as and when they arise.