Custom online applications – case studies

  Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM)
  MOPS application

Brief:
The total redevelopment of ACEM's Maintenance of Professional Standards (MOPS) programme.

Project:
The original version of ACEM’s online maintenance program for the fellows of the college was slow and often difficult to use. We were engaged to redevelop the application to make it more intuitive, user friendly and to speed the process up considerably.

To facilitate this, we created a colour coded Progress Summary Bar; a visual tool to improve the absorption of information. The user can now see at a glance where he is in the program in the current year; and by clicking on a button, review his overall progress within his current five year cycle. In addition, all links within the tool drill down to enable the user to examine his entries in minute detail.

The navigation was designed to be clear and highly interactive so the user would be able to move about between different sections with ease and flexibility.

Two libraries were created; a generic ACEM library for all recurring events, and a personal library unique to each user to store recurring events that are tailored to each individual. Upon data entry, the fellow can select an event from either library which pre-fills the activity fields.

For the online exam questions which are updated every quarter, each fellow can answer any or all of the questions and receive results in real time. Each fellow's results for each set of questions are compiled to provide an overall response summary so the fellows can see how they scored in relation to each other.

We also created an archive module to enable a quick review of the fellow’s entire history within the programme. As with the other tools, this module also allows the fellow to drill down and view the details of a specific entry for any year.

The MOPS application was built as a module within the EnterpriseFX Content Management System (CMS). The CMS is used both to manage the textual content and media on the site as well the point of access for the college’s administration staff to raise reports, interrogate the database, update the library and many other administrative functions.

  Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM)
  Online Training Assessment

Brief:
The conversion of their paper based trainee assessment program to an interactive online application.

Project:
The existing training program for the college’s trainees required an annual mail out by 1600 trainees of the entire year’s assessments. This process which could consist of upwards of 5000 individual forms to check, placed a considerable burden on ACEM’s administration.

The creation of the online training programme was designed to release ACEM from the majority of this workload and present ACEM’s trainees with a state of the art Internet based program. Along with the benefits to the trainees, the application’s data is synchronised with ACEM’s existing internal database structure, creating a round trip for both administration and the online users.

The application is used by several different groups of people including trainees, supervisors and various subgroups therein. A high degree of personalisation was built into the programme to enable different access levels, screen views and program rules according to the user group.

The hub of the application is the submission of a regular Interim Training Assessment (ITA) which occurs between two month and six month intervals. This process requires the individual login and submissions of the trainee and supervisor assessments. These individual assessments are then linked for a final joint assessment prior to final submission to ACEM for credentialing. The assessments are bound by numerous date rules and are linked to emails reminders and notifications to all parties, including ACEM administration.

Phase 2 of this programme includes an interactive Progress Summary Bar to provide the trainee with a clear picture of his progress throughout the application. It will also allow him to navigate directly to ITAs in all stages of completion. The addition of part time terms and leave entry will also be added in to enable trainees completing more than 1 term at a time to overlap them within the rules of the application.

A further online assessment section, Structured References was also slotted into the application. The assessments in this section ares linked to specific ITAs and allow the trainee to select three referees from pre-defined lists who must each complete a detailed assessment. All three individual assessments are bound to the trainee during a particular period of mandatory training.

For ACEM administration, a back end section which is accessible through the CMS was created to provide a highly detailed and effective reporting system. Their staff can review all aspects of the trainee's terms, assessments and overview to gain up to date data within a few clicks. In addition, an overlying set of business rules were written to enable ACEM administration to over-ride some of the front end date and access rules. This allows them a great degree of flexibility to support trainees who are unable to complete their assessments on schedule.

As with ACEM’s MOPS programme, the OTA application was built as a module within the EnterpriseFX Content Management System (CMS) to provide maximum flexibility and usability for ACEM.

Phase 1 of this application went live on schedule in August 2008, followed by Phase 2 in April 2009.

  Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM)
  CPDNSD application

Brief:
The creation of a sister application to ACEM's existing MOPS programme to enable non members of  the college working in Emergency Departments to maintain their professional standards online.

Project:
By and large the CPDNSD application build was to be a carbon copy of the MOPS application with a few notable exceptions. Access to the application was to be made available to non-members of the college which required the creation of a new level of personalisation which also needed to interact with the same rules and regulations of the MOPS program.

To facilitate this, we updated the original MOPS coding to allow for shared functions between the two applications with an additional parameter to select the user type. CPDNSD users would be identified by a specific grade as well as by the date that they were elected to the program. It is worth mentioning that a CPDNSD member can not simultaneously belong to MOPS.

The look and feel of the application was based on the MOPS template but using the colour scheme already applied to the print version of the course. The benefits of the creating a similar design for both applications enables a familiarity for both ACEM administration and potential CPDNSD members that would later become MOPS members.

ACEM administration are able to access to this module via a link in their CMS which is now quite a busy hub that runs one large and complex website and three separate custom built applications each of which have numerous reporting modules built in.