Evidence-based, no-fee tools to provide actionable insights for health and social services 

Health Standards Organization (HSO) and Accreditation Canada (AC) have launched a new cloud platform called OnboardQi™ to support health and social service organizations in the delivery of care during the COVID-19 pandemic. OnboardQi™ provides no-fee access to actionable, evidence-based COVID-19 checklists and resources, developed in partnership with Think Research.  

OnboardQi™ supports flexible “anytime, anywhere” engagement to improve quality and safety while empowering people to work in an open and transparent way, both within organizations as well as between organizations. In addition, OnboardQi™ helps to identify and address gaps in the delivery of safe and reliable care, facilitate on-going assessments and foster more effective communication among interdisciplinary teams. OnboardQi™ will soon include new functions to enable continuous quality improvement, providing a strong foundation for ACs assessment and accreditation programs around the world. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that now, more than ever, effective collaboration, partnership and integrated problem-solving are the way forward to better support patients, providers and their communities.  

HSO, AC and Think Research are partnering to provide up to date COVID-19 best practice tools based on the World Health Organization (WHO) and other leading public health organizations to assist providers as they build, assess and action quality improvement strategies within their organizations.  

As the world moves through the first wave and prepares for a potential second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, evidence-based checklists on infection prevention and control for long-term care, residential and retirement homes, virtual care, and Indigenous health and wellness, will support organizations and health teams as they quickly learn and adapt to better understand gaps and meet the demands of their respective populations.  

HSO’s development partner, Object Frontier Inc., provided additional development and quality assurance engineers to the team at no cost in order to help accelerate the development of the platform.  

To learn more or sign up, click here  

Key Features:  

  • OnboardQi™ and the self-assessment checklists are available at no-fee and are accessible to anyone with internet access.  
     
  • Through OnboardQi’s™ versatile and customizable platform and checklists, care providers can foster collaboration and conduct self-assessments on integral aspects of care for COVID-19, allowing for greater engagement among and between care providers.  
  • Checklists can be assigned to one or more people within a single organization, or across many organizations, streamlining communication and action among interdisciplinary teams. 
     
  • By selecting one of the COVID-19 toolkits, users can create a checklist-based assessment, customize the assessment by adding their own items to the checklist, and then invite participants to evaluate specific checklist items based on their role or responsibilities.   

Quotes:  

“The COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced the need to work together to bring forward new solutions to assist health care organizations and teams quickly identify and address the most critical gaps and needs in our health and social service systems. Using our no-fee innovative assessment platform and evidence-based checklists, health teams can assess and receive valuable insight to improve the quality of care and apply learnings to provide safe, reliable care in an evolving situation.”  

– Leslee J. Thompson, CEO, Health Standards Organization and Accreditation Canada  

“We are very excited about these evidence-based COVID-19 checklists because they integrate knowledge into daily practice and organizational workflows. They are practical, easy to use and empower care providers to do the right thing at the right time during the COVID-19 pandemic.  Critically they will be updated as our understanding of best practices evolves so the healthcare team will always be using tools based on the most recent evidence. These tools will ultimately enable us to provide the best possible care.” 

– Dr. Chris O’Connor, President and Founder of Think Research. 

About Health Standards Organization (HSO) 

Health Standards Organization (HSO) is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to improving quality health services for all. HSO is recognized as a Standard Development Organization (SDO) by the Standards Council of Canada and is the only SDO solely dedicated to developing health and social service standards that are recognized as National Standards of Canada. HSO builds global health and social service standards, innovative assessment methodologies and quality improvement programs customized to meet local needs. HSO has more than 120 consensus-based standards and evidence-based assessment methodologies adopted by accrediting bodies in Canada, Brazil and the Netherlands. For more information, visit www.healthstandards.org or follow us on Twitter @HSO_world.  

About Accreditation Canada (AC)  

HSO’s affiliate organization, Accreditation Canada (AC), is an independent, not-for-profit, organization that provides third-party peer assessments for health and social services in over 10,000 locations, and in more than 38 other countries. With more than 60 years of experience, Accreditation Canada delivers a wide range of high-impact assessment and recognition programs powered by HSO and customized to local needs. AC works with more than 900 experienced peer surveyors with significant health care and social service expertise and are trained in AC’s customized, continuous assessment program. For more information, visit www.accreditation.ca or follow us on Twitter @AccredCanada.  

About Think Research 

Think Research, an enterprise clinical content and technology company, delivers evidence-based clinical tools grounded in best practice. Our focused mission is to organize the world’s health knowledge so everyone gets the best care. Since 2006, our cloud-based, digital tools have empowered clinicians around the world and have impacted millions of patients across all sectors of care: acute, primary, long term and community. We are proud to serve as a trusted health system partner to a rapidly growing client base that spans three continents and more than 2,200 healthcare facilities. For more information, visit www.thinkresearch.com or follow us on Twitter @TRChealth.  

About ObjectFrontier 
ObjectFrontier, Inc. (OFS), a software engineering firm founded in 1997, is based in the Atlanta suburbs and has offices in the US, Canada, Sweden, Norway and India. It helps corporations build innovative, compelling software that drives their revenues and digitally transforms their operations. Not a staffing firm but rather an engineering firm, OFS uses its full-time employees to leverage the advanced technologies of machine learning, data analytics, blockchain, and their deep product engineering experience, spread across all the popular mobile, cloud, and server platforms, to build robust, scalable products and solutions. Their customers include 6 of the 100 largest software firms in the world as well as many Fortune 500 companies in banking, healthcare, and media. For more information, contactus@objectfrontier.com or visit https://www.objectfrontier.com. 

HSO and Accreditation Canada Media Contact:  

Erin Bonokoski 

Director, Communications and Public Affairs 

Erin.Bonokoski@healthstandards.org  

613-858-5570 

Think Research Media Contact: 

Genevieve Tomney 

Vice President, Communications 

Genevieve.Tomney@thinkresearch.com 

416-460-5784