Designing a Database to Facilitate Efficient Information Management at the Health Mentors Program Office

Abstract

This report describes the internship work performed at the Health Mentors program (HMP) office at Dalhousie University. HMP is an inter-professional education program under Dalhousie’s Faculties of Medicine, Health Professions and Dentistry. It is an experiential learning process that is compliant with the National Interprofessional Competency Framework. The students are prepared to be collaborative practitioners who keep the goals of the patients at the centre of care. The HMP director’s office is the administrative hub of the program. It holds information pertaining to the students, mentors and faculty members. The information changes each academic year when new students are enrolled, new mentors recruited and faculty members take up varying responsibilities. The internship project was to design a database that captures and stores data that is generated through an academic year in order to facilitate HMP program governance and coordination. The existing data and information was analyzed to understand stakeholder requirements, information requirements and information flow. Recommendations were made to improve data quality and prevent human errors while transcribing the data to the database. The recommendations were limited to data collection. The recommendations were, to specify required attributes, to have a standardized data collection form and to introduce measures to keep the data up to date or timely. Information models and diagrammatic representation of the information acquired will be used to guide the final implementation of the database. Designing a Database to Facilitate Efficient Information Management at the Health Mentors Program Office