Questionnaire Management System (QMS)
Quality Health is a nationally approved contractor by the Healthcare Commission, providing services to 360 Trusts across England for the National Patient and Staff Surveys. Their operations encompass Foundation Trusts, Acute Hospitals, Specialist Acute Trusts, PCTs, Mental Health Trusts, Ambulance Trusts, and SHAs—covering all aspects of the NHS. In 2006, Inflecto took over management of Quality Health's systems, and shortly thereafter established integrations with an EMC Captiva Optical Mark Recognition system for the automatic processing of scanned questionnaires. From 2006 to 2011, Quality Health experienced significant growth, leading to substantial changes in the types of questionnaires they needed to handle and a year-on-year increase in workload. The existing systems faced challenges managing the large volumes of data and adapting to increasingly complex survey requirements. To address this, Inflecto developed a modular system that would offer the necessary flexibility to support both present and future survey programs. This new system features core functions that can be augmented, combined, and expanded by users through code extensions and workflows. It includes a Visual Studio Add-In that enables users to create workflows using a simple drag-and-drop interface and to develop custom code plugins for modifying system functionality at critical points. Such capabilities allow the system to manage a variety of survey programs. The solution consists of more than 10 subsystems and is built on a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), ensuring that all subsystems work together harmoniously while allowing for scalability. The system also integrates with essential NHS systems like the Demographics Batch Service (DBS) and the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSIC). Over the years, our systems have processed countless NHS questionnaires.