BPM makes ethics reporting easier

To help meet compliance requirements, the National Eye Institute has deployed a business process management (BPM) solution. The NEI, which is part of the National Institutes for Health, has chosen Process Director software from BP Logix.

The Institute wanted to provide better document management as well as a better document retention process. One of the most visible sets of documents that the NEI wanted to address involves ethics reporting.

Terry Williams, CIO of the National Eye Institute, says, “We deal with scientific people and management people—and every year we must report on any potential conflicts of interest. With scientists, there can be potential conflicts of either a scientific or medical nature, whereas for management, it can be the relationship with technology companies or products. Our executive officer learned about Process Director from a sister institute, The National Institute of Mental Health. He appreciated how they handled their ethics reporting, and we decided to handle ours similarly.”

According to a press release from BP Logix, its solution provides a robust infrastructure that enables business users to define, automate, manage and report on business processes. The software moves business process management under the control of users, because no coding is required.

Williams says, “While ethics reporting represents our first process, we have lots of different kinds of documents and needs, including document disposition, initiation to final storage and retention. With Process Director in place, we can consider the entire life cycle of documents and their requirements.”