WDGPH a leader in IT innovation
IT department developing programs for in-house; finding other health units are using them too
GUELPH – Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health’s (WDGPH) IT department has been hard at it, developing systems and programs to ease the workload and increase accuracy and efficiency within the organization.
And its work is being recognized by other health units in the province, the board of health heard on May 6.
“Innovation is part of our work,” said Michael Whyte, manager of the data and analytics team.
“We try to build solutions to affect real workload problems. We want to address challenges in real time in a real way.”
For example, Whyte said the manager of vaccine preventable disease noticed some “pain points” in the way parents were to report their children’s vaccination history to the health unit.
So, Whyte’s department developed a vaccine submission portal with that one, dedicated function.
Called Vaxlink, it’s available in many languages, sending notices via PDF versus regular mail which has improved the reach and lowered the cost of the program, and QR codes mean parents can submit vaccine history with their cameras within seconds.
“It enhanced the quality of data we collected, reduced repetitive work and led to bottom-up improvements. And it’s been popular with other health units,” Whyte added.
He said his department has also developed a way to bar-code vaccines, helping nurses and clinical staff quickly identify if vaccines are expired.
“It’s the best outcome,” Whyte said. “Clinical staff now have more time to spend with clients.”
Principal data scientist Justin Angevarre said the department also developed its own Public Health Innovation Zone – phiz.ca – which is a place to share its digital “playbook” within the health unit.
Intended for public health staff, phiz.ca “provides a space to share implementation knowledge, lessons learned and reusable approaches arising from WDGPH’s work.
This work reflects a more mature stage of innovation capability at WDGPH. This maturity supports local improvement first while also contributing back practical digital capability to the broader public health system,” states Whyte and Angevarre’s report.
The systems lead to efficiency in-house and have also drawn interest from other health units.
“I love this report,” said board member Erin Caton. “I can imagine so many expansions. We’re not relying on outside software. It makes it so efficient to be homegrown.”
Other board members were equally excited by the programs.
Medical Officer of Health Dr. Nicola Mercer said WDGPH has presented its innovations to other health units, the College of Nurses and Public Health Central West.
“It’s not meant to be just us,” she said. “If more people in the field in other health units use it, we will all benefit broadly.”
