Enhancing healthcare training data management

Challenge 

Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW) is the strategic workforce body for NHS Wales. As a Special Health Authority, they play an important role in addressing strategic and specialist workforce issues, making Wales a great place to train and work for staff, and maximising the contribution of all professions.

HEIW’s Quality Unit is made up of dedicated people committed to the delivery of excellent patient care through education and training. The team works with a range of organisations, including Foundation and Specialty Training Programme teams and local education providers across NHS Wales, as well as deaneries and Education and Training Boards across the UK. This is to monitor the quality of programmes that include trainees from Wales to ensure that medical training meets General Medical Council (GMC) standards.

To do this, the Quality Unit uses a risk-based management framework, which ensures that when training does not meet national and local standards, changes are made to improve its quality. 

This framework is made up of two systems: a Microsoft Access Database for the Training Quality Management Risk Register, and a Microsoft Access Database to capture free text comments taken from the annual National Training Surveys. Both systems were effective, but also caused challenges, including:

• limited data entry capabilities

• accessibility to sensitive data

• limited ability to attach supporting files

• limited access for multiple users

• accessibility to PDF reports for Health Boards 

HEIW saw an opportunity to build new platforms capable of modernising and addressing these issues in a way that was efficient, futureproof and benefits everyone.

Approach 

We took an agile approach throughout this project to identify and address where the biggest impact could be made to improve the databases.

Understanding user needs

We started with a discovery process, digging into both systems to see where we could provide the biggest benefits to users. This included speaking with key people, from staff to Health Boards, to hear about the pain points they were facing with the current platforms.

We identified a range of areas where changes could be made from this work. Allowing users to see multiple risks at once, rather than individually, diversifying the look and processes of different pages to avoid errors being made, and making pages more user-friendly, we found, would all go a long way to improving the digital experience.

Bringing the new platform to life

With areas for improvement mapped, we got to work designing the new solution. The best approach was building on the Microsoft Power Platform, as it met both HEIW’s reporting and NHS Wales data storage needs. 

We covered a wide range of tasks during the development phase, including:

• swapping out the old solutions for Training Quality and Free Text Comments, and moving all the data over to the new platforms

• creating three Microsoft Power BI reports to visualise data collected by the new solution

• putting the solution through a development, test and production environment and organising deployment pipelines within the Power Platform to support Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)

• training users on the new platform

Taking an agile approach

Our whole approach to this project was based around agile working. This involved regular feedback and engagement sessions with HEIW to ensure that the new solutions met HEIW's changing needs and was always aligned with the project goals.

One example of this was that, to ensure the development of the app was done in the best way possible, we split the project over two sprints of 10 days and one sprint of five days. Each sprint aimed to build and improve the new solution, while allowing us to work together to deliver a platform that better met end users’ needs and expectations. 

Impact 

After three months of hard work, in January 2024 we handed over the new digital platform, providing HEIW with a modern, streamlined tool for managing training data and risks. 

All of HEIW's needs were built into the new platform. These included allowing multiple users to access the platform at one time; easier and quicker access to the system; improved security as permissions could be given to access certain files; and multiple file types being supported. The platforms also meet the Welsh Government Digital Standards, ensuring they comply with regulatory requirements and meaning they could be used for future growth and development across NHS Wales.

We will now work with HEIW to provide continued support and maintenance for the new solutions, with plans for ongoing improvements based on feedback and evolving needs.