Integrated ICT solutions strategically boost prevention practice

Introduction
Modern multidisciplinary occupational health and safety practice requires extensive training, communications and coordination efforts, which multiply exponentially as an OHS service expands and diversifies. Belgium’s leading external prevention service Group IDEWE addresses these challenges by developing intelligent, integrated ICT solutions, thus gaining a strategic advantage on the prevention market.

Methods
Prevention business needs are methodically analysed and translated into generic ICT tools geared for mobile, multidisciplinary knowledge workers servicing 35,000 Belgian companies and organisations, monitoring 750.000 workers. Information flows are organised on a just-in-time, need-to-know basis. Encoded observations and expertise are fed as raw material into expert systems integrated in registration & reporting applications. Automated early warning systems alert prevention experts to possible problem situations and emerging trends.

Results
Results: OHS expertise and observational information is being harvested, validated, encoded, exchanged, processed and shared within the entire group of prevention experts and support personnel through a portfolio of integrated ICT applications which improve quality by reducing administrative red tape, streamlining and standardizing prevention business operations, alerting prevention experts about opportunities, suggesting beneficial actions, and sometimes even preventing common mistakes in complex situations.

Discussion
A well-integrated ICT infrastructure geared towards harvesting prevention expertise offers substantial benefits in OHS prevention practice. The larger a prevention service, the lower the cost-per-seat of ICT developments, which has – together with increased services and quality requirements imposed by the multidisciplinary approach and ISO certification – caused a huge shake-out in the Belgian prevention market. Prevention services worldwide considering the same move could hitch their wagons onto the ICT locomotive of larger services that have already made a successful transition.