Breast Screening Callback Application for NHS Sandwell and West Birmingham Trust

WeShape is partnering with Sandwell and West Birmingham Trust to develop a Breast Screening Callback Application. This project involves migrating an Access database to a multi-user web application, enhancing patient record management with centralised authentication and a robust backup/restore process.

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The Challenge:

• Reliability: The existing database could not guarantee that all data was being stored, leading to possible data loss 
• Availability: Restricted availability to the database, limited access to one clinician at a time, which could also lock up due to application instability, requiring IT support to perform maintenance to unlock
• Security: The database was shared on a network drive with broad access permissions and no audit trail of changes, where data could easily be copied or overwritten 

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Solutions: 

Our team leveraged expertise from our Technology Academy to develop the application, focusing on API development using the Next.js framework and migrating the database to AWS Aurora. This effort is further supported by our Technology Director, who provides architectural oversight for web applications across front-end and back-end technologies.

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Outcome: 

• Increased trust levels with centralised identity management and authentication are now mapped to their existing network identity services
• Secured access control and separation of data access and application use as a result of the cloud migration
• Ensured accountability with the addition of an audit trail and centralised logging and metrics
• Re-development of the database allowed additional data points to be stored, i.e. going from single data point diagnosis to the ability to include additional treatment info and related diagnostic records, as well as dynamic and repeatable diagnosis input through the ‘episodes of care’ feature
• The upgraded reporting feature allowed extensive outputs on a wider range of data for upstream/central NHS reporting
• Primed for future integration with modern data platform programs with replication and separate client access, allowing data extraction and reporting to happen independently

As a result of the success of this project, we are now engaged in additional deliveries across various NHS Trusts in partnership with AWS.