SVWebsite

Client: Victorian Department of Health for the Victorian Clinical Placement Council

Central to the training of our health professionals is provision of clinical placements, a process through which students apply their knowledge and skills in a healthcare setting.

The Victorian Department of Health (DH) has established 11 Clinical Placement Networks (CPNs) across Victoria.   The Victorian Clinical Placements Council (VCPC) was also established to work with the CPNs to provide state-wide strategic leadership and advice on professional-entry student clinical placements. 

Each CPN provides input into the development of state-wide planning objectives with a view to facilitate increases in clinical placement numbers, provide required support and increase participation by health services, as well as monitor and improve the quality of placements.

Following a high level specification process, Spatial Vision was engaged to build, support and rollout this important business tool to all CPN members.  viCProfile was designed to be simple to use, composed of an interactive Data query module as well as an Atlas style module providing interactive mapping and dynamic data tables for use by the systems main nominated users; Placement providers, Education providers, CPN Coordinators and Policy Developers.

Project Objectives

There are a number or project objectives in this project which include:

• Provide an online resource of related information to support ongoing clinical placement planning across Victoria;
• Develop a structured data model to enable analysis and query of relationships between various clinical placement and associated data entities; and
• Deliver a suite of tools to support stakeholders in decision-making.

Project Solution

viCProfile was built by Spatial Vision using a mix of open source and commercial off the shelf (COTS) components. The solution architecture included MySQL database, Joomla Content Management System (CMS), a custom Tabular data query tool (bespoke Java delivered within an iFrame) and a spatial and statistical data visualisation capability using Instant Atlas.

All application components are delivered seamlessly through the Joomla CMS viCProfile website (see link below).

  www.vicprofile.net.au

    

The viCProfile site provides an interactive resource where users can apply a series of filters to generate custom tables with key data to support decision making.  Customisable reports enable the user to query data from four different perspectives; 1) CPN (high level view), 2) Placement Providers (supply), 3) Disciplines (throughput) and 4) Education Providers (demand).

Users are able to access information about clinical placements on a placement provider basis through a Placement Provider ‘snapshot’ as displayed below.

viCProfile provides an interactive mapping interface enabling users to identify areas of clinical placement activity relative to health workforce, as well as a number of other statistics pertaining to demographics/population and service utilisation measures.

Project Results

Despite very tight project timelines, the viCProfile site was delivered on time and within budget and received a great deal of praise from stakeholders. This dynamic querying tool provides access to critical information to meet business objectives.

The system draws together large volumes of complex data and displays this in a graphical and easily interpretable and usable format.  For example, a user can quickly compare data sets of discipline-specific health workforce to clinical placement activity with a health facility overlay.  This provides a mechanism for geographically targeting clinical placement capacity in a strategic fashion.

The site delivers a highly usable and interactive suite of tools to assist Victorian clinical placement initiatives and help increase capacity. The website draws together integral business data from a range of sources and provides an evidence-base for decision and planning support.

viCProfile provides a suite of tools and supports the CPNs in their efforts to improve clinical training outcomes across Victoria. 

The site can be accessed at the following URL: http://www.viCProfile.net.au

Victorian Department of Health for the Victorian Clinical Placement Council