[Technical] Parent Portals - medical records

[Roland Gesthuizen]

At my school I also happen to be the first aid coordinator. When we
treat a casualty, I can phone the office and in a few moments somebody
returns clutching a printout. If the details are wrong then we ask
parents to annotate the changes and give the form back. This becomes a
hard copy of the transaction record. The same thing is done once per
yearas a validation step. Each student is given a hard copy printout
of all their details and asked to confirm the details. We just update
the cases records from the anotations on the returned printouts. Far
better to rely to audit a hard copy that can be dug out of the files
or completed entry box.

As much as I love technology, you are opening a can of worms working
online with volatile soft copies and not just for privacy details. I
don't want to spook you but just imagine if something goes wrong and a
parent indicates that they updated the online form with their child's
notifyable medical condition but the school did not respond or take
this into consideration. The onus is then on the school to show that
the parent did not enter the information or that their esystem did not
fail. A hard copy with a new condition can easily activate an alert
with senior coordinators and the welfare officer. Harder to do this
online.

Yes, parents miss important details and leave gaps that we chase up
(again again and again etc). In so far that this is their problem ..
it should not then become the schools problem.

Regards Roland

2009/8/7 Paul Williamson <paulw at huntingtower.vic.edu.au>:
> Hi All,
>
> We are currently looking at getting our parents to update contact and
> medical details online rather than through paper forms and I think the
> first hurdle is how do you authenticate parents and ensure that only the
> parents are accessing the information?
>
> 1. I'm interested in what details you authenticate your parents with if
> you do this, be it a school provided pin number (by mail, email?), birth
> dates, children's names etc. ?
>
> 2. Do you offer the facility to update students medical records online?
> If you do, do you show them existing records and allow them to be
> updated, or simply show a blank e-form to re-submit all the
> information(more secure option)?
>
> Any thoughts on this?
>
> Our main drive towards electronic forms is that we can force certain
> fields to be filled before a form is returned, as a lot of forms come
> back with missing information and we don't know if this is because it's
> not applicable or was skipped over by accident.
>
> Thanks and best regards,
>
> Paul Williamson
> Huntingtower School
> Mt Waverley, Victoria
>
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-- 
Roland Gesthuizen - ICT Coordinator - Westall Secondary College
http://www.westallsc.vic.edu.au

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can
change the world; indeed it is the only thing that ever has."
--Margaret Mead