Department of Health and Human Services

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Quality and Safety Review System

Octo - Department of Health and Human Services

The Problem:

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s (AHRQ) Quality and Safety Review System (QSRS) is a patient safety surveillance system. QSRS detects adverse events by abstracting data from a sample of hospital medical records representing a population of patients and to provide reports on rates of those reported adverse events. Octo was tasked to help improve QSRS functionality by delivering updates including production fixes, developing new features, and enhancing accuracy of the information that is used in the system.

The Solution:

Octo implemented a tailored Agile framework to incrementally deliver updates to QSRS including production fixes as well as new features, such as a user driven visualization capability with drilldown capabilities. We were able to deliver on tight timelines due to our iterative Agile development framework which was augmented by an automated delivery pipeline using the GitOps model.

Key Takeaways
  • Implemented an automated DevOps pipeline, resulting in expedited deployments to quality assurance testing every 15 minutes.
  • Introduced an Agile-based iterative development framework and to date delivered 100% accepted work items across 30 sprints.
  • Built a new data visualization solution with an Inter-rater Reliability feature.

The Benefits

Octo improved the overall application design framework which optimized performance and accelerated report execution. Our support makes data easier to enter into QSRS user interfaces. AHRQ also benefits from our consistent iterative delivery of value which results in better forecasting and planning. The predictable development cadence allows AHRQ to better plan for the roll-out of future features and release QSRS to hospital care systems nationwide tentatively planned for October 2020.