Addressing Medical Assessment Discrepancies

As a start-up, Qpercom encountered many challenges. In 2008, the software was perceived as an educational tool and a sector that investors did not openly support. Having no investor funding in place, the company proceeded with extreme bootstrapping to efficiently research, develop, and gain customer traction, to bring their product to market.

Despite the lack of funding and industry support, Thomas and David persevered with their innovative business venture.

The Business and Innovation Centre at University of Galway supported Qpercom from 2008 to 2017, providing office space and access to research and development facilities on campus. It also provided support in mentoring, business development and legal expertise.

Qpercom licenced from University of Galway certain copyright-protected material and know-how relating to in-house developed Management Information Systems technology, as part of their digital assessment portfolio. This has led to its current product offerings, which focus on clinical examinations, large scale interviews, and multiple-choice question exams.

It also provides technical support for clinical skills assessments planned within the College of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences in University of Galway.

In recent months, Qpercom launched Mock-OSCE.com, a direct approach to online assessment offering medical and healthcare students live remote training and access to the Qpercom assessment platform. The platform uses real actor patients and examiners to help improve the clinical communication skills of students with all users participating from home using video call technology.

There has been knowledge dissemination through scientific publications in peer reviewed journals and scientific presentations at national and international conferences. Qpercom recently carried out the first ever cross-institutional comparison of Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs) Quality Assurance in Europe, with eight other European universities.

Pathway to Impact

Developed by medical educators for medical educators, the company’s digital platform, Qpercom delivers accurate and real-time exam results based on the performance of undergraduate and postgraduate medical and health sciences students, resulting in a pass or fail rate. This allows universities to replace inaccurate paper-based assessments to deliver reliable results with remote online assessments.

The online platform has led to a 70% reduction in administration time and the elimination of 30% human error by removing the traditional paper-based assessment process.

Dr Kropmans uses the following analogy: “A commercial airline pilot grabs the microphone and proudly announced that he passed his simulation exams recently. He landed smoothly in five scenario's and crashed in five others, would you stay seated? In the flight industry, the above scenario would be unacceptable, in medicine (50%) and nursing (40%), in Ireland and the UK, we stay put! Whereas in Northern and Central EU the cut-off score is 60% to 70%!”

The software applies the Standard Error of Measurement to each student's result, which determines whether they should pass or fail, due to assessment error. It makes the examiner's decision-making fairer and more confident. It also eliminates human error that in the past meant some students passed when they should not have.

Pre-Covid-19, assessments were performed physically on university campuses with many using Qpercom’s software. The company has since pivoted to a successful online product offering where students meet simulated patients/actors and examiners online. It has also extended its product offering to the healthcare volume recruitment sector.