Users Reference Group Meeting

Following the Australasian users group meeting the next day the Health Sector EMIS Reference Group met to review the use of WebEOC and other systems during the last four months of the pandemic response and identify future developments and enhancements.

One of the key issues that has emerged over the last few months was the importance of data definitions and supporting metadata. Whilst WebEOC was incredibly adaptable and many boards and metrics were created 'on the fly' some of the challenges were around the interpretation of this data and better integration with existing Ministry business intelligence tools is a priority.

The form and function of all of the boards utilised during the response was reviewed as was the supporting training material. One of the most critical boards utilised was the 'WebEOC Issues and Updates' board which generated over 750 user suggestions, bugs and enhancements. This was essential in allowing the Emergency Management Team to work with Critchlow's and ensure continual support to the sector as well as a comprehensive record of changes to the system.

Supporting WebEOC we've made considerable work developing the requirements around a 'Reporting and Analysis Database'. This essentially sits in parallel to WebEOC but allows database reporting from a range of systems; WebEOC, EpiSurv (Epidemiological Surveillance), ad-hoc data sources and base data such as census data to be analysed against each other. Whilst ongoing support from Data Base Administrators is required to fix data links if they change it offers significant enhancements to the Intelligence functions. The next phase of work will look at feeding back reports and spatial data, generated from the database in Business Objects, to WebEOC. The intention is that in the future when you go to update metric data as soon as you save the record you will get real time feedback.

Thanks to all of the sector reps that provided such open feedback and suggestions throughout the day.