The Faculty of Health Sciences purchased a software suite from Knowledge4You (K4Y) in July 2012. The solution is MedSIS 3C or MedSIS, which stands for the Medical School Information System. This software solution is a highly customized system designed to support the effective administrative processes within a university faculty of health sciences, specifically, for the needs of a school of medicine.
Medical schools function differently from traditional academic departments, making their needs unique. McMaster’s Medical School is no exception and is challenged with the additional complexity of being a distributed program with three different sites, spread over six geographic regions and 17 teaching hospitals. In addition, the McMaster medical program is also a three-year program taught through small group sessions, instead of a more traditional four-year program taught through extensive group sessions. The factors that make the McMaster Medical School unique (distributed campuses, small group teaching, three-year program) make the administration’s need to manage the medical school a challenge, which has been addressed through the MedSIS 3C solution.
The MedSIS solution consists of the following modules:
- Admissions
- Registration/requirements
- Letter of good standing (LOGS)
- Academic scheduling
- Clinical scheduling
- Home and visiting elective placements
- Clinical placement manager
- Learner, faculty and course evaluations
- Reporting
- Registration/requirements
- Letter of appointment (LOA)
- Letter of good standing (LOGS)
- Training certificates
- Event scheduling
- Clinical scheduling
- Activity log
- Learner, faculty, rotation and event evaluations
- Competency-based medical education
- Reporting
Although MedSIS 3C was purchased for, and primarily is driven by, the Medical School within the Faculty of Health Sciences, other schools and programs within the faculty use some of the available functionality of MedSIS 3C.
Some of the core information within MedSIS is shared between programs and modules. This shared data is stored in system-wide registries, which include:
- Locations
- Supervisors
- Medical trainee days (MTD)
The MedSIS solution is a core service of the Faculty of Health Sciences being managed and supported through the Computer Services Unit (CSU). There is a MedSIS Steering Committee which is used to manage ongoing priorities.