Out of date software was slowing down the digitisation of patient data and causing major backlogs at Te Whatu Ora. A major systems upgrade was required, and the accurate movement of data from the old to new systems played a key part in the project. Enter Data Sauce, specialists in Data Migration. Terry and the team worked methodically and collaboratively to deliver a fully reconciled migration within agreed timeframes – with a little fun along the way.
The client: Te Whatu Ora, Te Toka Tumai Auckland
Te Whatu Ora Health, Te Toka Tumai Auckland (formerly ADHB) provide public health services to the people of Auckland Central as well as a range of services at a regional and national level. These include emergency, elective surgical and medical services for both inpatients and outpatients. This comes with a lot of personal patient data that needs to be stored securely and in an accessible and usable format.
The problem: Legacy system needed upgrading
Auckland DHB had been digitising clinical documentation since 2002. 10 years on in 2012, the software used to digitise and access the clinical documents was out of date and there was no roadmap to develop it any further. As a result, a procurement process was undertaken to identify a vendor with a suitable system to meet requirements. A vendor was chosen and plans were put in place to implement the new system and migrate the millions of documents and digitised images from the old system to the new system. These were clinical documents used to provide care and treatment to patients, so the data migration was vitally important to the ongoing care and clinical safety of these patients. This is where Data Sauce came in.
The solution: a data migration to a new system that delivered greater efficiencies
Data Sauce had a very methodical approach to data migration and operated with a high level of detail assessing the data, developing the data migration plan, and validating the data post migration. Terry and the team were a lot of fun to work with and were generous with their time and knowledge sharing.
“Data Sauce worked with real collaboration between the data migration process and the business with a clear goal of getting it right and supporting the specific goals of the project.” – Mary Thompson, Director Health Information Management
The wider business praised the data migration aspect of the project as impressive, professional, and successful. The whole process was superb:
- the approach to the data migration problem,
- the design of the data migration and the cutover plan,
- the thoroughness of the data validation process to ensure all images from the original system were successfully migrated with all the associated metadata to the new system,
- all within the agreed timeframes.
The result: A flawless data migration delivered on time
Data Sauce certainly met expectations in terms of getting the job done and to a very high standard. The data migration aspect of the project was completed within agreed timeframes and was 100% successful in that all images in the old system were successfully migrated and validated into the new system. There were robust data validation processes in place to identify issues and resolve them to ensure all images were present and accounted for. The business was extremely happy with the result.
The benefits: Better efficiencies eliminated backlogs
The successful data migration supported new ways of working in the team that eliminated backlogs in processing work within the first three months of implementation.
The new barcode technology resulted in a significant reduction in turnaround times for digitisation meaning the team could finally achieve their KPI of 24-hour turnaround, where previously it had been pushed out to one or two weeks. This meant that the business could reduce the resource required in the Scanning Centre and redeploy staff to other areas of need.
“Engage Data Sauce. I would highly recommend them not only as they clearly understand the data migration processes, but because of the way they approach the work and engage and work with the business.” – Mary Thompson, Director Health Information Management