ODIN - Techno-economic modelisation of information flows

Description :

A. Brief project description

ODIN is managed by a four-member partnership, including a coordinator:
- The Red Cross of Belgium – French-speaking Community (coordinator)
- The Belgian Consultative Committee on Bioethics (CCBB)
- LENTIC (multidisciplinary research centre of the Faculty of Economy, Management and Social Sciences of the State University of Liege).
- CreaTel MID, an ICT firm specialising in document process management.

The project’s aim is to accompany an organisational change within the Red Cross and the Committee on Bioethics in order to facilitate the day-to-day activities of users. Courtesy of a detailed analysis of both the context and user needs, the project studies information flows and the most appropriate methods to implement in order to improve flow organisation and dissemination. This analysis provides the basis for the development of technology tools, tool implementation and user shadowing (training, evaluation, improvement). In all probability, these tools will show similarities in the two fields, but will not be entirely the same owing to the two organisations’ different needs.

B. Expected results

a. Red Cross
The experimental field of the Red Cross of Belgium project’s opening phase is confined to the organisation’s emergency service. Analysis and implantation of a technology tool will mainly focus on the administrative control of preventive emergency actions (in French, Actions Préventives de Secours or ‘APS’). APS can for instance consist of the emergency arrangements at sporting events such as football matches, motocross meetings or the Brussels 20 km running race. These arrangements comprise teams of volunteers, health equipment and/or ambulances. There are roughly 2600 APS assignments each year, some of which can occupy as many as 100 volunteers over several days. The tool will therefore set out to facilitate the administration of deployment requests and monitor these in order to ease the administrative burden on staff.

b. Consultative Committee on Bioethics (CCBB)
Phase one of the CCBB project will be centred on Local Ethics Committees (LEC) and their relations with the CCBB documentation centre. In Belgium, every hospital complex has its own LEC dealing with internal ethical issues. Across Belgium there are over 200 LEC. The LEC fill in activity report forms and send these to CCBB. At present these reports, which are filled in by hand, are being recopied into a database by the person in charge of the documentation centre - a repetitive and time-consuming job. The project’s aim is two-fold:
1. Ease the administrative burden on both LEC and CCBB staff members responsible for keying in activity reports by computerising these annual reports.
2. Improve LEC access to the CCBB documentation centre.

C. Phase II: projected aims

This phase will be characterised by the more widespread implementation of the technologies studied and tested during phase I.
- Researchers will establish models for structuring and disseminating information
- The project’s coordinator and his user partners will transfer the results to other sections and departments and other associations (such needs will be determined at the end of phase I)
- CreaTel MID will make assorted technologies available that it will have to validate in accordance with parameters from users and researchers.

[http://www.createl-mid.be/odin/]


- Contact person (project's coordinator):

Croix-Rouge de Belgique – Communauté francophone
Dorothée Selle – Marc Lefebvre
Rue de Stalle 96
1180 Bruxelles
Tél: 0478 88 15 75
dorothee.selle@redcross-fr.be
dorothee.selle@health.fgov.be

PARTNERSHIP

Coordinator Croix-Rouge de Belgique – Communauté francophone

Partner 1 Comité Consultatif de Bioéthique de Belgique

Partner 2 Createl M.I.D.

Partner 3 Université de Liège – Laboratoire d’Etudes sur les Nouvelles Technologies de l’Innovation et le Changement (ULg - LENTIC)