This ART-DECOR® Newsletter publishes an interview with Malcolm Mundy, PRSB lead data architect in the United Kingdom. PRSB is using ART-DECOR® since years for their standards in the UK.

PRSB’s work helps to ensure that professionals have all the correct information they need about someone to administer high-quality care efficiently. PRSB’s data architects and project managers model the information within the standards and to do so, they require software that allows us to create data sets that are internally consistent, elegant and cross-reference new standards with existing ones.

This is where ART-DECOR® comes in. ART-DECOR allows PRSB to view all our standards clearly and compare each of them to other standards projects. Digital transformation is one of the central aims of the NHS and social care and PRSB’s work in creating digital standards, with the assistance of ART-DECOR, is an essential part of achieving this.

We caught up with PRSB lead data architect, Malcolm Mundy, who gave us a rundown of how PRSB uses ART-DECOR and why it’s important to his work.

In what capacity does PRSB use ART-DECOR for our projects?

ART-DECOR is integral to our standards development. We use the app to develop, store and socialise new data concepts and data items for standards. By socialise, I mean the app allows us to cross-reference and connect data items from different standards using the same underlying data store across all of our standards. This allows for our standards to fit together without duplication or omission of essential data items.

Could you give a run through of the process of using ART-DECOR, using a real example from PRSB’s work and take us through each step?

Before any standards development is undertaken, many stakeholders and clinical groups are engaged via workshops and consultations to understand what information needs to be included in the standard. When this is understood, the PRSB creates a project in ART-DECOR to hold the standard’s information model. We then use the app to view all of our previous standards and look for areas where we have already developed similar models. Following this, we conduct analysis of where there are gaps – ‘gap analysis’ - in our current standards’ information models to see the data sets our new project needs to provide to plug the gap.

What are the main benefits of using the software?

ART-DECOR provides a consistent environment for the hosting of standards’ information models and crucially, it allows for multiple users to view and develop our standards, terminology and value sets. It also allows us to cross reference our standards to see what areas are missing in our information models, something we were not able to do until we started using the software.

What are PRSB’s future plans for using the software?

The PRSB plans to extend its reach and may purchase additional resource. We are currently in talks about ART-DECOR potentially hosting our own specifically designed version of the programme. We will also be working with ART-DECOR to conduct an audit of our use of the tool, to ensure that our use of the software is technically conformant.

Thanks also to Athena Rees, Communications Officer, and Helene Feger, Director of strategy, communications and engagement at PRSB.

Title Photo: © Monkey Business – stock.adobe.com, Photo Malcolm Mundy: Private

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