Case Study

Accessible reporting solution for Central Government Agency

Brief

The MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) is the government agency which is responsible for ensuring that medicines and medical devices work, and are acceptably safe.

They wanted to develop a web based application where Adverse Drug Reactions / Yellow Cards can be reported by anyone from patients to healthcare professionals including doctors, pharmacists, nurses and carers. The application needed to be accessible to all and easy to use.

The MHRA were looking to provide a website that allows the electronic capture of yellow card information from both members of the public (MOP), and health care professionals (HCP), in a secure and easy to use manner. This captured information is then to be made available in the international E2B format so that is can be read into the UKs drugs analysis database.

They chose to work with Red Ant as Red Ant has a long history of working with the MHRA and tied organisations. Our expertise in web accessibility, our technical proficiency and our appreciation of user experience where all invaluable in delivering this broad reaching system.

Strategy

Red Ant created a smooth easy to use reporting system that hid the technicalities of the reporting process from end users and integrated directly into the analysis systems in use by the MHRA. This was possible by keeping the following objectives in mind:

• To capture information in a manner that is easily followed by members of the public and health care professional users (two different routes tailored to audience)
• To keep information secure
• To reduce where possible information parsing errors due to incorrect terminology (use of dictionaries and other tools)
• To provide an experience for the user to encourage appropriate use and re-use in capturing yellow card information.

Execution

We developed a fully accessible and easy-to-use application which includes enhanced usability tools for predictive medicines and side effect searches. There is a simple and intuitive step-by-step reporting solution that is fully compliant with E2B standards. Data can then be downloaded by MHRA and integrated with internal analysis software.

The project would be split into three websites (a general introductory site and two encrypted (SSL), websites for each of the two audiences), and a secure web service. Each site is maintained by the Colony CMS allowing the MHRA control over content to aid users through a secure administrative interface. The all information pertaining to the user would be held in a separate database and be accessed through a secure web service that would not be available directly from the Internet.

The Colony CMS provides a tried and tested framework to deliver both standard website information and bespoke process flows through modules. The framework contains a form creation technology (SXForms), which allows rich form controls and help to be deployed into forms rapidly and returned as a defined and validated XML document ready for serialization into the database, translation into a third party web service or file.

The Colony CMS also provides options within the framework to allow secure members only areas, and member targeted areas which would be employed in the secure sites to control and restrict access to data and forms.

Data from the system would be made available in the E2B format and PDF through automated collection systems.

The application was launched in February 2008 with notifications and posters in every pharmacy in the UK.

Results

The MHRA have found that more adverse drug reactions have been reported which gives them invaluable information on drugs and whether they are proving to be dangerous or not. The reason that more reactions have been reported is due to the fact that users now find it far easier to go to the site and enter the details and they have also reported it to be a time saver.