We have made significant progress towards paperless project management: one of our most important projects is now run entirely digitally. Our ARTIS software system also supports us in internal task management, but also offers additional benefits that traditional paper-based processing cannot provide.
Project duration: ongoing
Our first project, which we are handling entirely paperless, involves evaluating specialist literature for a pharmaceutical company. We receive abstracts or reports from medical journals in PDF format, which we search for specific keywords, e.g. diagnoses or side effects. These documents have different requirements and therefore need to be handled differently: some require an English translation first, some need to be processed urgently by our client, and some are incomplete or incorrectly scanned, meaning we have to request an updated file. Some reports mention additional online material that we need to request.
Previously, a printout was made of each document, which then underwent various processing steps in succession, such as screening for specific keywords and indexing. These steps follow each other in a specific order; at GIMD, different employees are usually responsible for this, who, after reviewing the document, place it in the next tray and thus move it on to the next step.
With paperless processing, all documents are entered into a task list that displays the specific actions required for each document and its current status. Internal security mechanisms ensure that the processing steps are followed in a logical sequence. What’s more, certain tasks may only be performed by specially trained employees. Each employee must first log into the system and is then only shown the documents and tasks for which they are responsible. The ARTIS software also ensures that no document is processed by more than one person at a time. And it prevents any changes from being made to a document that has already been completed.
Certain keywords in a document are automatically highlighted in colour: these include active ingredient and trade names, as well as keywords defined by the client that affect the type of processing. For example, the term ‘safety’ automatically triggers accelerated processing, which is specified and controlled by the system. Such categories specified by the client can in turn be defined flexibly depending on the order.
We have specified other key terms ourselves: for example, the term ‘supplementary material’ indicates to us (and the computer) at first glance that additional material is available and must be requested.
Security mechanisms ensure that documents that are on hold – e.g. due to a complaint – are not ‘forgotten’: such documents that have not been processed for a certain period of time are displayed and thus resubmitted. Each completed document undergoes a quality control check at the end and receives a ‘seal’ that locks it for subsequent changes.
Computer-assisted task management speeds up processing and ensures quality in a number of ways. But the ARTIS system offers additional value: it can estimate in advance the processing effort required for the daily volume of incoming documents, allowing tasks to be distributed flexibly and evenly – a particular advantage when order volumes fluctuate greatly. Another advantage is the documentation of each processing step: when was what done by whom? This is particularly important in the event of ambiguities or errors and is increasingly demanded by our clients as part of their quality management.
All in all, using our task management system offers faster throughput, greater transparency, additional security and additional benefits thanks to documentation and effort estimation. In addition, the system can be flexibly configured depending on project requirements, making it extremely versatile.