Preserving our research earns global recognition
A pioneering project to ensure records from our clinical trials are easily available to future generations of researchers is in line for global recognition.
The work by our corporate records team is on the shortlist for the most outstanding digital preservation initiative in commerce, industry and the third sector.
The winners of the Digital Preservation Awards will be unveiled at an international conference at Ghent University in Belgium in September.
Strict regulations govern the retention of research records, and national guidance about storage is based on having paper copies. Until now organisations have shied away from exploring digital preservation and the NHS had not attempted it at all.
However, Barts Health is in the forefront of the field, reflecting our ambitions for further expanding research on the back of our track record of recruiting more patients into commercial medicine trials than anywhere else in the country.
Simply saving data about trials in a file is not enough: digital preservation is about anticipating hardware and software changes so records can be retained and retrieved in up to 25 years’ time.
The corporate records team flagged the risk to the trust of not having a digital archive and secured support to procure software from a specialist provider, Arkivium.
Having implemented the system last year, we have so far accepted the records of 12 research studies, and while expecting more to come from within the group are also seeking to sell the service to others in the NHS.
And as holders of one of the UK’s largest historic collections of hospital and healthcare records, the Trust Archives will also use the software for its collections.
Sandra Blake, who led the project with her colleague Emma-Louise Day and support from others in the wider Information Governance team, said: “Without a digital archive these records would be at high risk of loss, corruption, and inappropriate access.
“They’d either need to be printed out as paper – and that means hundreds of pages for each trial – or stored on CDs, USBs, and shared drives wherever space could be found. We’d have no oversight of these records and could not guarantee their security or accessibility.”
Dr Jenny Rivers, director of research and development, said: “Research plays a vital role in diagnosis, treatment and care and preserving research records enables the knowledge gained from studies to transform healthcare for the benefit of our patients and the wider population.
“Having a digital archive provides confidence for research teams that information will be preserved and can be accessed for the whole of the required retention period.”