At the heart of Vitalware is event data.
Vitalware provides support for the capture, search and maintenance of all life events including:
- Births
- Deaths
- Marriages
- Civil partnerships (same sex marriages)
- Divorces
- ITOP (induced termination of pregnancy)
- Foetal deaths (stillbirths)
Late registration and historic back capture of each of these is also supported.
A design feature of Vitalware is the ease with which the standard registration modules can be adapted to meet local legislative requirements and policies. Each Registry can support its own unique registration tables while still making use of the processing and management features of Vitalware.
Other registers can also be supported by Vitalware, such as Registers of Wills.
Amendments
Each of the event modules supports a range of amendment processes relevant to that event type. For example, the Births module supports Adoption, Gender Change, Late Registration, Change of Name, Addition of Father’s Details, Addition of Parents' Marriage Details, Correction of Clerical Error and Legal Correction.
The amendment process, which can only be performed by authorised personnel, first copies the record to be amended and marks the original with a status of Pending. The user is then able to make the appropriate change and finally apply the amendment. On application of the amendment, the new version of the event record replaces the old and the status is changed to Current. The old version is retained and is linked to the new version as a permanent audit history of the registration.
Note that amendments which are subject to privacy constraints (e.g. adoptions and gender changes) are performed by re-registration of the event, with references between pre- and post-adoptive records being established automatically but remaining highly privileged information. While Registry staff can retrieve the post-registration record, only highly privileged users can retrieve both and determine the pre-adoptive record from the post-adoptive record and vice versa.
Multiple Sources for Event Data
Vitalware supports the notion of multiple corroborating input sources to verify that an event has occurred. For example, a birth notification received from a hospital must, in all significant ways, match the registration form submitted by the parents before the birth event will be registered. Similarly, a death record may require both the medical officer’s death record (or coroner’s report) and the funeral director’s notice of disposal before it is recognised and registered. In this way, Vitalware ensures that only valid events are registered.
Vitalware incorporates an automated matching process which uses a suite of heuristics to determine matching registrations and notifications. Note that the different input sources of data can arrive and be entered at any time.
The automated matching process determines:
- Accurately matched pairs
These pairs (birth registration form from parents and hospital notification of birth for instance) are cross-referenced and the registration is "formalised", allowing products such as birth certificates to be generated from them. - Possibly matched pairs
These pairs are identified and made available to a suitably authorised staff member for acceptance or rejection of the possible match. - Unmatched registrations
Registrations older than a given period (generally one week) for which no notification can be identified are made available to a suitably authorised staff member for follow-up. Follow-up may include selection of a notification with which it should be matched, contact with the appropriate hospital/birthing centre for confirmation of the birth or further investigation of the registration form. - Unmatched notifications
Notifications older than a given period (generally one month) for which no registration has yet been received are made available to a suitably authorised staff member for follow-up. Follow-up may include selection of a registration with which it should be matched, automatic generation of a reminder notice to be sent to the parents or contact with the appropriate hospital/birthing centre for confirmation of the birth.
Automated letters and manual followup of all unmatched registration and notifictaions ensures that all events are registered.
Life Event History
Closely coupled to the event based data modules is the Life Event history of an individual. This facility uses a suite of heuristics to match recorded events automatically and derive a comprehensive life history for individuals. The Life Event generation in no way impacts the registration modules. It simply augments them by cross-referencing individual event records.
The event matching processes produce exception reports for unmatched or "possibly matched" events automatically, allowing authorised personnel to complete or reject the system’s proposed linking action.
While Vitalware's Event Matching facility automates the cross-referencing process, it can be handled manually by an authorised user simply by dragging and dropping one record on to another.
Double Keying Data Entry Support
Vitalware supports Double Keying Data Entry for entire registrations or critical fields of registrations. When this tool is activated, new registrations are entered by a data entry staff member in the normal way but are stored in a "holding bay". A second data entry staff member then re-keys all or the critical parts of the registration. This staff member is alerted to any inconsistencies between the first and second keying and must make appropriate corrections.
On completion of the second keying, the registration table is updated. These records are then available to all authorised users via any of the Vitalware interfaces.
This feature ensures that all registrations are recorded accurately.