Off into the Sunset: Legacy Patient Treatment System Retirement
Business Problem
A nationally recognized pioneer in bone marrow transplant research initially created their own treatment management system as no off the shelf systems were available in the market. Over time, the client grew and formed a consortium with other providers to share their collective research and provide better care to patients. Forming this consortium resulted in further customization of the patient management system which made the system unwieldy and difficult to maintain.
The Solution
To provide a solution that would fit the needs of all consortium members, we gathered requirements on a consortium-wide scale that included subject matter experts from clinical, research, and business continuity to discover what system access, date entry, and reporting capabilities were being used on the platform, down to the data elements level. The requirements gathered were analyzed and translated into a set of capabilities and features needed from a new patient treatment management system. Two major findings were discovered during translation: 1) there was a clear path forward for the consortium's clinical teams in an integrated system and 2) the research and business continuity team solutions would need more functionality from additional sources.
Results
Forum Solutions led a system selection process that included a Request for Information (RFI) from potential system solution providers to support the clinical teams. Careful preparation and data traceability throughout all the requirements gathering process provided a clear clinical “day in the life” picture of what data the system contained, who was using the data, and how they were using the data. This in turn enabled us to present clear proposals for each of the solutions needed to sunset the client’s legacy patient data management system. The client is proceeding with implementing the clinical patient treatment management system while conducting an RFI for the research and business continuity team solutions.