West Hertfordshire Occupational Health

Margo Linton, Head of Occupational Health for West Hertfordshire Community Occupational Health Services is charged with looking after the occupational health needs of the Trust’s 4,100 staff. Staff are screened for a variety of health risks associated with carrying out their jobs, such as exposure to infectious diseases, radiation and so on.

Over a period of time, the department has accumulated over 6,000 individual files, each containing around 25 pages. Occupational Heath files consist of general health reports, blood reports, screening results and other medical history. For example, new permanent and temporary staff, such as nurses and locums need to be screened on joining and routinely thereafter. Certain staff such as MRI scanner operators need to be continuously assessed to ensure that their exposure to radiation is within required limits. In all cases, the records are highly private and confidential.

The OH files need to be retained for up to 75 years. Soon after taking on the role, Margo realised that the challenge of maintaining a paper-based archive over a long period of time with the added need to maintain confidentiality made the introduction of an electronic document management system inevitable.
Margo approached a number of document management suppliers and shortlisted Preview Services and one other firm. Preview were eventually chosen because of "their exceptionally professional attitude" according to Margo.

Preview’s recommended solution was based on the Invu document management system, primarily because of its high security and version control. During the implementation phase, Preview maintained a mirror installation – the OH files were scanned and loaded onto the mirror system, from where they were exported to DVD. This meant that the data could be transferred to the live system with no further processing required.

Reflecting upon the smooth implementation of the project, Margo comments, "We are just about to complete the scanning and have uploaded well over 100,000 images. We are so impressed with the system that we are looking at several other areas within the service where a similar approach would be beneficial."

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