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.