Occupational Health Information Systems, Do We Need Them? What Are The Critical Success Factors?
Authors: Granhus Bjorn , Heid Steinar 
Published: December 2007

Den norske statsoljeselskap a.s. (Statoil) which is a major Norwegian oil company has used a mainframe (VM/CMS) based occupational health information system (OHIS) since 1991. The system is distributed among 11 offshore platforms, two refineries and three office centers. It contains medical (25000), workplace (1500) and 6500 material safety data sheet (MSDS) records. The paper deals with the experiences and challenges met during the development of this system and a new client/server based version for Windows. In 1992 the Norwegian Data Inspectorate introduced new legislation setting extremely strict standards for data protection and privacy. This demanded new solutions not yet utilized for systems of this scale. The solution implements a fully encrypted data flow between the user of the medical modules, while the non sensitive data from the other modules are not encrypted. This involves the use of a special "smart-card" containing the user privileges as well as the encryption key. The system will combine the advantages of a local system together with the integration force of a centralized system. The new system was operational by February 1996. The paper also summarizes the experiences we have had with our OHIS, areas of god and bad cost I benefit, development pitfalls, and which factors are most important for customer satisfaction. This is very important because of the ever increasing demand for efficiency together with company reorganization and changing technology.

Introduction

In Norway the Act relating to worker protection and working environment (1977) require that companies should keep files of the working environment and health conditions among the workers. Hazardous substances should be described in a MSDS file system. The data and whereabouts of each product should also be tracked and filed. A very tangible benefit from such a system is the knowledge how to reduce sickness and absenteeism. On offshore platforms the absence of a worker costs about $1000 a day. Because of this even small beneficial effects from the system are worth while.

In 1994–95 there was a decrease of approximately $700,000 in expenses due to lost time because of sickness and accidents offshore. Even if only a fraction of this amount may attributable to the benefit of the system it is very valuable as an indicator of where the problems are and what we can do to address them.

Most of these tasks benefit from the use of a computer system. In the occupational health services we need both general office automation (which save about 20% of the workload compared to manual handling) as well as the power lying in the searching, reporting and communication capabilities of modern systems.

The challenge is to make such a system as user friendly, modern and compact as possible and make it fit into your company's existing infrastructure and business strategy. It is also a challenge how to utilize the new tool to its full potential.

Several papers imply that it is more important to change the way your organization works than to "cast conventional routines into silicon". There are examples of measurable benefits also in the latter case but you probably have the best outcome from your investment if you combine both strategies. Proving hard benefits in dollars and cents is difficult in this area, but it is possible. On the other hand nobody who has made the transition into a computer based occupational health service will ever go back to paper and pencil. P. 151