AXIA digital

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Reflections on our history; not just a technology company

Our preparations for our forthcoming ISO 9001 and 27001 inspections have prompted a purge of all the documents we have accumulated over the past 20 years, in part to create space for paper-free desks. You would have thought that as a company committed to electronic systems that we would have already been on top of this, but we are an IT case of ‘physician heal thyself’!

As the primary guilty party for this, I have been the one clearing out the company papers. It has reminded me of all the work we have done. It’s easy to forget some of it. Not because it was work we would rather not be associated with, there is very little of that, more because we have moved on. What though jumps out is how those ‘long forgotten’ projects have added to our collective corporate intelligence, that we continue to offer to all our present projects.

In our early days, we developed not only online guidance tools to help adults with their career choices but numerous other online diagnostic and planning tools. Dealing with the new challenge of customising these online assessments for specific regions of Italy, prompted us to develop the ability to easily customise content for specific groups. Our work with numerous training providers delivering NVQs and now apprenticeships, helped us to understand and develop complex hierarchies of roles for the assessment of skills. Assisting an area-based organisation to track the impact of guidance interviews, taught us how to manage data across multiple and different databases.

    

There are several attempts to produce strategy papers to describe our offer although it is also apparent that various new markets are opened by unexpected opportunities. Developing a site for nurse prescribers at a University, ultimately led to our supporting the practice assessment of all students on health-based courses. Through it all through our commitment to understanding our customer’s needs and creating sites that meet their requirements is apparent.

We can only do what we have done because of our technology and the bank transfers to colleagues in Canada, serve as a reminder that the Axia in our company name, derives from our previous owner Axia NetMedia corporation who were responsible for the operation of the Alberta SuperNet. Still having colleagues in Canada and the UK who are used to managing big data has supported our work on sites with big data sets; we now have one with over 800k users.

Today, I am on my way to a discussion about the equivalence route for the Academy for Advance Practice. The technology piece is almost complete. However, the core part of the discussion will be about records of evidence, how much? how do we evidence validity? It will echo the one I had last week with nurses at the Simon community in Dublin, which was about what and how do I capture my professional development in an environment full of new and daily challenges, many of which require new development and learning.

Different contexts but essentially the same sort of discussion we have been involved in throughout our history. The solution as always is a combination of the application of sound principles of assessment and making the best use of technology, to provide an intuitive as possible pathway through that assessment journey.

At the meeting, I will be endeavouring to contribute our technology and our collective experience and knowledge developed over 20 years.

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Axia Digital Ireland launched

The first Board meeting for Axia Digital (Ireland) was hosted by the Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery at the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland (RCSI) on May 17th 2019. Holding the meeting at this venue not only signified the importance of this milestone in the company’s history, it is also the company’s registered address in Ireland.

Over a number of years the company has become well known by the team at the Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery. The company supplies their online e-portfolio, which is being used by those who attend the Faculty’s courses and those who decide to become a Fellow of the Faculty. All applications are now managed online following a successful pilot last year.

Chris Peat, Customer Services Director commented after the Board meeting that: ‘At a time of uncertainty in the UK about future trading with Europe, the company wanted to make a strong statement about our commitment to all our present and future customers in Ireland. Creating Axia Digital (Ireland) is a major part of our strategic plan for the company and we look forward to expanding our work in Ireland and beyond.’

His comments were echoed by the Faculty’s Director Professor Thomas Kearns, who is now a non-executive director of Axia Digital (Ireland): ‘The company has been an active supporter of the Faculty over the years through regular attendance and sponsorship of our conference and by presenting at our seminar programme. They offer the Faculty and other organisations in Ireland not only a high quality technical platform, but also detailed knowledge and experience of how it can be used, to support the professional development of health professionals and thereby improve patient care.’

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Partnership working at the NET conference 2018

Axia Digital is again sponsoring the annual NET networking for education and health care conference being held at Churchill College, Cambridge.

The conference is the first one to take place since the launch of the new Nursing standards and there are several presentations highlighting the work of the pan area groups, which are now developing regional practice assessment documents across the country.

Creating pan area assessment documents based on the pan London document now appears to be a given. Indeed, there is momentum to create a national document. Several partnerships are also planning to have a digital version of the new assessment document(s) when they are finalised.

The session on ‘Partnership Working’ at the conference demonstrated how much progress had been made with pan area projects. It is a major step forward that nurse practitioner and academics are taking control of the process of introducing the new standards rather than having the process dictated to them.

It also highlighted some of the opportunities that would be presented by having a comprehensive data set of assessment practice, that would be easier to access and review because it was online. There was a commitment at the workshop to not only replicate the paper document but to explore innovative approaches to assessment.

Some of the challenges were also acknowledged. Various presenters made a plea to ensure that there was a consistency with respect to the roles of those involved in assessment. In our experience this is particularly necessary for academic staff, who are often caught between the demands on them from their host Universities and their students/mentors. Digital assessment potentially provides an answer because it does reduce the time checking portfolios, as well as enabling those portfolios to be accessed throughout the year. However, those benefits are only delivered if there is clarity about the role of what is to be called the academic advisor.

Chris Peat our Customer Services Director who is attending the conference comments,

‘It is great to hear how partnerships are being established across the UK. We welcome these developments and we are here to let Universities know that we can support whatever approach to digital assessment that they decide to adopt, whether it be as individual university, as part of an area-based pan assessment group or a mixture of both.’

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New Standards – New Opportunities

One of the emerging themes, from the meetings that have taken place across the country about the new Nursing standards that were launched by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) at Easter, is the enthusiasm for adopting digital assessment.

The Universities we have worked with for more than five years deserve great credit for this development. They took the bold step of converting their paper assessment documents to electronic ones and as a result transformed the way Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health Professional skills have been assessed. All the evidence is that not only are there significant savings in time and resources but the quality of the assessment is improved.

For our part we have demonstrated that our core technology has always proved itself fit for purpose and we have never had to fundamentally change it however that does not mean we have stood still. Each site we have developed has contained new functionality. For our latest site at Oxford Brookes University we have made all functionality accessible with one click and we have added the ability for tutors to add simulated hours to multiple student records with one action.

We are already talking with individual Universities and pan area groups about innovative ways of assessing the new standards and we look forward to continuing those discussions at the NET conference which we will again be attending.

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Capturing Simulated Learning

With each University we have worked with we have discovered their innovative approaches to delivering education to nurses and other health professionals. As a result each time we have developed a site for the online assessment of professional practice, we have adapted our platform to enable the University to continue to use their innovative assessment practice.  At Bournemouth University we adapted the platform to accommodate their flexible structure for placement and at Surrey University we introduced a ‘PIN,’ which enables the device being used to make an assessment(s) to be swapped between the student and mentor.

BePAD is the site we have recently developed with Oxford Brookes University and it is being used to assess the practice of Nurses and Paramedics. Oxford Brookes University make use of their advanced simulated learning laboratories, to sign off some of the skills that student nurses need to demonstrate, often in advance of starting in a practice setting.

The Nursing and Midwifery Council have confirmed in their report on the new standards of proficiency for registered nurses and standards for education and training that their ‘approach recognises the growing role and importance of simulated learning, providing AEIs with flexibility in determining how simulation is used for learning and assessment.’

On most occasions simulated learning is delivered to groups of students. This new functionality enables a tutor working with each group, to push details of the simulation based learning including the number of hours, into the portfolio of each student who attended the session with one click, thereby reducing the time spent going into each individual portfolio.

To view the site go to https://bepad.org.uk and look at the ‘How-to use the BePAD Guides at the bottom of the page.

 

Our unique offer lies in our ability to deliver to our customers exactly what they require. We do not have products but instead a platform which we can use to mirror our customer processes. None of our customers need to change what they do to fit into our system, our system is flexible enough to reflect what they currently do and enhance the user’s experience.

Since 1997 AXIA Digital has been helping organisations capture and assess skills and competencies that are demonstrated in a professional setting or in the workplace. We create leading edge digital solutions, which mirror and then enhance existing assessment systems. Our solutions are all individually hand crafted but are deployed on the same platform.

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