General Practice Education and Training (GPET) – the organisation that oversees GP training programs on behalf of the government – has set up a new data warehouse and BI system to report internally and to government.

The organisation has completely overhauled its information management strategy and systems as part of the refresh.

The new system includes a data warehouse to bring together information from a variety of SQL databases, including its main primary source system, a custom SQL database called Iris, and a number of secondary sources.

Information relates to the 2,200 GP registrars accepted into the program every year, the 22 regional training providers that contribute registrar information, training facilities and programs.

GPET funds and oversees the network of 22 regional training providers under the Australian General Practice Training (AGPT) Program umbrella.

AGPT is a vocational training program designed to equip GPs with the skills they need for future medical practice in Australia.

“We’re a bit similar to a University – the biggest difference being there is no set [curricular] path that registrars have to follow,” said Rebecca Nolan, manager of the program analysis and workforce division at GPET.

“Registrars pop in and out and do things as they please. The information management system is equally complex to be able to handle that.”

Until mid 2008, GPET lived without a data warehouse – it used Crystal Reports to interrogate the production databases and prepare reports for management and other stakeholders.

Stakeholders include the Australian Government, the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, the Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine, universities, divisions of general practice, rural workforce agencies and GP student, registrar and supervisor organisations.

GPET engaged Altis Consulting to help design the new system. Altis also did some work around helping GPET define their information strategy internally and provided skilled resources where required.

“We engaged Altis to help us draft system requirements, review products and set up the new system,” said Nolan.

GPET settled on the Hyperion Performance Suite as their chosen dashboard and reporting architecture.

“Our regional training providers have access to data through a number of dashboards built in Hyperion,” said Nolan.

“Training providers will have direct access into the data warehouse next year. We also want to get the Department of Health and Ageing online [with it] sometime as well.”

It is anticipated that the Department will use the system to determine GPET’s compliance with funding requirements and to measure the overseeing organisation’s performance against set KPIs.