Success Story

University of New South Wales Initiates National Database for Medical Schools

The Committee of Deans of Australian Medical Schools (CDAMS) is conducting a 12-month project to design and initiate a national database that will collect reliable demographic and educational data on medical students at all 15 Australian and several international medical schools. It was intended that the database would provide an efficient and cost-effective mechanism for evaluating undergraduate and graduate entry medical education, as well as the short and long-term outcomes of medical education programs, particularly rural health programs. Goals and Outcomes of CDAMS Design and develop (code/write) the national database as a secure central facility that will allow automatic importing and seamless incorporation of data from a range of sources within medical schools, ensuring strict adherence to State and Commonwealth privacy legislation; Coordinate with the host Medical school the technical issues of storage and hosting of the national database, and implement the database on the central server; Pilot the database at 3/4 participating medical schools and make revisions where necessary; Provide IT advice to the Project Officer and Steering Committee on security and confidentiality of data; data storage; reporting formats and protocols; ongoing management requirements by CDAMS, including personnel; and other IT issues as identified by the Steering Committee. IT Magnet Proposed Solution Overview IT Magnet proposes that the system be developed as an Internet based application where both the data entry and the reporting interfaces will be made available to the users over the Internet using Internet browsers. There will be no need to install software at the medical schools. The users will access the system from a URL (eg. https://www.cdams.org.au/student.aspx). The data entered by the medical schools will be transferred to the central database at the CDAMS using Secured Internet based data transfer protocol – HTTPS. The reports will also be made available to the users of CDAMS and the medical schools over the Internet. However, the system will allow the CDAMS’ administrators to export customised reports to be sent to external parties such as Dept of Health & Ageing. Solution Advantages The system is available to the medical schools and the CDAMS’ administrators anytime from anywhere in the world (home, office and Internet café) Highly secured using 8 layers of server, desktop, browser, firewall, encryption and file level security No VBA client is required on the end users’ PC at the medical schools and CDAMS; hence there will be no installation and hardly any support issues such as old hardware/software and conflicts with other applications In future, no upgrades will be required at the user end; hence there will be no need to contact or send updated application to the end users Fast data submission to CDAMS Medical schools are able to view reports anytime from anywhere Cutting edge technology; hence scalable and efficient The system will be built on Microsoft technologies as Microsoft skills are widely available Information for the end users (eg. Policies) is updateable instantly from the admin interface The system will be almost self-managed and will require hardly any interactions with the developers Highly available; redundant servers and services can be put in place for further availability but we don’t recommend it as the costs outweigh the benefit