Inserm

The customer

Since 1968, the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm) has produced statistics on medical causes of death. This is essential data for health monitoring and the management of public health policies, at the national and international level. The Center for Epidemiology on Medical Causes of Death (CépiDc) is the service unit in charge of this mission for Inserm. The statistics produced annually by CépiDc-Inserm are based on source data from the medical sections of death certificates. Death certificates are drawn up by the doctor declaring the death, in paper format or in electronic format.

The objectives

CépiDc-Inserm faces crucial challenges in the management and efficient acquisition of data from death certificates established by doctors. The need for rapid and precise reporting of this data is essential to serve health alerts, develop national statistics on causes of death and fuel research influencing health policies.

CépiDc-Inserm wanted to entrust to a service provider:

• The digitization, acquisition and entry of complex medical data from death documents established on paper;
• And the resumption of the entry of certain data from death certificates established in electronic format, in the event that the text requires spelling or syntactic corrections.

Our answer

Luminess, a recognized expert in the dematerialization and processing of healthcare flows, has managed the processing of paper death certificates drawn up by doctors since 2014. The scope of Luminess' services was expanded in 2021 with the processing of electronic certificates. In 2022, Luminess was again notified to support CépiDc-Inserm across the entire scope including:

1) Digitization, acquisition and entry of data from documents relating to deaths established on paper:

• Monthly reception of shipments from ARS/Territorial Delegations, recovery and opening of envelopes;
• Sorting and preparing paper documents for scanning;

• Recognition of document types and scanning as images;

• Storage, archiving and destruction of original documents;

• Automated acquisition of “structured” data, using any appropriate technique (LAD, video coding, etc.), with optimal precision;

• Acquisition of handwritten medical data.

2) Resumption of the entry of certain data from death certificates established in electronic format, in the event that the text requires spelling or syntactic corrections:

• Recovery of initial data files provided by CépiDc-Inserm;

• Recovery of cause of death data entered by doctors.

3) Provision of a collection and production monitoring portal:

• Daily provision of production data;

• Dashboard with evolution of the main reception and production monitoring KPIs.

Each step is meticulously handled by rigorous quality control, guaranteeing the delivery of structured data and high-quality images. The operating procedure put in place makes it possible to avoid any loss of these original documents (of which there are no copies), from their receipt to their storage in their archive box.