Summary:
- Client in health sector has large ongoing research project.
- Client will only work with transcription firms who are Cyber Essential accredited.
- Sensitive nature of subject matter means confidentiality issues beyond usual requirements.
- Standard transcription levels not suitable for this specific research.
- Number of researchers uploading interviews with different ways of labelling files but all transcriptions being sent to one researcher.
- Made sure that our Cyber Essentials accreditation was up to date and provided certificates to client.
- Brought online a fully UK based and GDPR compliant server so that all confidentiality and security requirements were met.
- Worked closely with client to create a bespoke level of transcription that would meet the needs for their research.
- Liaised with client and transcribers and formulated a coherent labelling system for the transcripts.
- Client very happy with the level of service and still using TP Transcription for the project at time of writing (almost 2 years after project commenced).
Client:
Public Health Wales was established in 2009 as part of an NHS restructuring process. Public Health Wales is an NHS Trust based in Cardiff with the aim to protect and improve health and wellbeing and reduce health inequalities in Wales.
Project:
Public Health Wales approached us in August 2018 with a project regarding the mental health of members of the Police Forces across Wales and how work practices could be changed to improve the mental health of officers. The project was to be ongoing and involved the transcription of several hundred interviews with Police Officers discussing the impact of their work on their mental health.
Challenges:
There were several challenges with this project. Confidentiality is always one of our priorities with any project but given the very sensitive nature of the subject matter, confidentiality was even more of a concern than usual. In addition to this, Public Health Wales informed us that they only deal with companies that have Cyber Essentials Accreditation.
A further challenge was that none of our standard levels of transcription were deemed to be appropriate for this project by the client. They felt that intelligent verbatim was not detailed enough but that true verbatim was too detailed. Finally, there was the issue that there was going to be several researchers from Public Health Wales each with their own system of naming files but files were being returned to one person for the next stage of their process.
Solutions:
To meet the confidentiality demands for this project, we introduced a new a GDPR compliant UK based server for both uploading audio files and returning transcripts. This ensured that no audio files or transcripts ever leave the UK, are encrypted during transfer and are password protected at all times. We had met the criteria and been awarded Cyber Essential Accreditation in April 2018 so we were able to provide the necessary certificates and the client was happy to work with us.
We worked together with Public Health Wales to find a bespoke level of transcription that they felt would be appropriate for the project. They uploaded an audio file and we transcribed it a number of times, slightly altering the level of detail each time until we found a level of transcription that was deemed suitable by the client. We then wrote up a description/set of instructions for this level of transcription that could be sent to our transcribers so that this level of transcription could be met with consistency at all times. We also formulated a consistent file naming structure so that no matter how the audio files had been named by the researcher, the person receiving the transcript would know exactly what interview they were analysing.
Outcome:
Public Health Wales were happy for us to proceed with this project once we had resolved these issues. Feedback has been excellent and we are still the sole transcription company working on this project at the time of writing (April 2020).
