31st August marked the final day for John McCormick’s tenure as Director of CASA.
Terry Farquharson is Acting Director of Flight Safety, while we await the announcement of John’s successor.
CASA has a project underway to replace the existing Medical Records System (MRS) with a modern, robust system. There are components of the existing MRS that are 15 years old and are no longer supportable. The age of the existing system has translated into frequent outages and unreliable service to our DAMEs as well as CASA staff.
AvMed have taken this opportunity to focus on design features to speed-up the whole process i.e. from Application to Issue of an Aviation Medical Certificate. The system is also being built utilising technology that will make it available on mobile devices i.e. enhancing the accessibility of the new system.
The Applicants will have an online interface to enter and maintain their medical history. This will be a cumulative history that will reflect the applicant’s entries as well as any amendments that the DAME may make during an examination. It is in the DAME’s best interests to encourage their applicant to log-on to the new system and update their medical history prior to their appointment.
A list of the routine and special tests (as in CASA Audit Requirements) required by CASA for a specific medical examination will be available when the appointment is being made. This will allow the DAME’s office to arrange all referrals as well as the collection and upload of test results prior to the examination. Once a report has been uploaded to the system it is then available for viewing by the examiner.
The new MRS is integrated with a WestPac Credit Card payment system that will allow the collection of CASA fees through a secure credit card payment. This can be carried out in the Applicant’s interface or the DAME’s interface depending on circumstances. Previously CASA has had to wait for confirmation of receipt of funds before it could issue certificates. In the new system, this will be an immediate confirmation of funds being received. Certificates can then be issued immediately.
An automated rules engine will generate a list of issues flagged through the medical examination process. DAMEs will use a search facility on the SNOMED Clinical Terminology taxonomy to populate a list of Medical Problems / Disorders which will then be mapped back to the examination issues list. This will provide the up-to-date Problem List. Medical Assessment hinges on the problems identified.
To make an informed examination, and in some cases, assessment, DAME’s need to have access to the aviation medical records. MRS 2 will be a web browser based application i.e. all DAME’s using this system will need to access it via the internet – there will no longer be any ability to manage paper-based Aviation Medical Examinations. We are also deploying the application onto highly redundant infrastructure that will mean MRS2 is always available.
An MRS2 demonstration is planned for ASAM in Brisbane, with training beginning early in 2015. We will keep you informed.
A survey will be sent out today based around Practice Management Systems, please take the time to complete as the data collected will assist with the MRS2 system development.
The contact number for pilots and controllers is 1300 4 AVMED ( 1300 4 28633).
The contact number for DAMEs has not changed: +61 2 6217 1170.
The final DAME2 session for 2014 is being alongside the ASAM annual conference in Brisbane. There are limited seats available. If you wish to attend please email clinical.governance@casa.gov.au.
Saturday 13th September 1.30pm - 5.30pm.
Seminar and conference information
| Event | Date | Location |
|---|---|---|
| ASAM Annual Conference | 10-13 Sept 2014 | Brisbane |
| ICASM 2014 | 12-16 Oct 2014 | Mexico City, Mexico |