OCB PUBLISHING LIMITED

HELM - Health Education Learning Management

HELM is a dedicated, multi-site cloud based, learning management system that can be customised on a client by client basis and integrated with ESR. HELM includes over 200 NHS Trust statutory/mandatory, leadership, prescribing and clinical e-learning modules that are OLM/ESR compliant. Available as individual modules or module 'packs'.

Features

• Fully hosted, customisable, cloud based learning management system
• SCORM 1.2 compliant
• Fully compatible with NHS IT infrastructure
• Integrated user management tool and real time reporting functionality
• Cross platform compatible and operating system agnostic
• Fully browser based, no need to install any software
• Deployable across multiple sites simultaneously
• Integrated user communication tools
• Ability to create learning pathways for different job roles
• User support service included as standard

Benefits

• Reduce medical practice errors
• Reduce NHS litigation claims
• Detailed report generation, for example CQC compliance
• National NHS CSTF aligned training materials
• Significant cost saving when compared with classroom training
• Ability to assess, monitor and report learner compliancy
• Continous online evaluation of staff competency
• All training content peer reviewed by NHS staff
• Integration with ESR/OLM

£1.98 to £40 a user a year

• Education pricing available
• Free trial available

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at nic@ocbpublishing.com. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 14

Service ID

704400362735068

Contact

Nicholas Blackwell
07977216640
nic@ocbpublishing.com

Service scope

• Software add-on or extension: No
• Cloud deployment model: Private cloud
• Service constraints: None
• System requirements: HELM is fully compatible with the NHS information technology guidance

User support

• Email or online ticketing support: Email or online ticketing
• Support response times: 4 hours
• User can manage status and priority of support tickets: No
• Phone support: Yes
• Phone support availability: 9 to 5 (UK time), Monday to Friday
• Web chat support: No
• Onsite support: Onsite support
• Support levels: HELM setup, customisation support and client support/training is provided free of charge, with a dedicated project manager assigned to each client. HELM user support is included as standard in the annual licence fee as a factor of the number of users.
• Support available to third parties: Yes

Onboarding and offboarding

• Getting started: The HELM team provide a full configuration service for free that includes both onsite and offsite training as well as the provision of both administrator and user guides.
• Service documentation: No
• End-of-contract data extraction: Data can be extracted in CSV, PDF and HTML 5 formats. The HELM team can also supply data dumps directly from the database(s) if requested for no additional fee, including specific SQL queries. All user data can be encrypted and archived for retrieval for a period of 7 years without fee if requested by the client.
• End-of-contract process: On contract exit user access to the HELM LMS will be restricted on the date of contract expiry and all learning activities must be completed prior to this date and all certificates downloaded. Administrators will continue to have access to the full suite of admin functionality for a period of six months from contract expiry. OCB Media will work with any successor supplier under a non disclosure agreement to provide unrestricted access to all database tables for the purposes of data extraction, as well as providing technical advice to assist said supplier with any data migration requirement. Note that this does not extend to OCB Media providing an API specifically for this purpose or co-developing an API with the successor supplier. Six months subsequent to contract expiry the HELM LMS will not be accessible by the client or successor suppliers. At the request of the client all existing data can be encrypted and archived for retrieval for a maximum period of 7 years for no additional fee.

Using the service

• Web browser interface: Yes
• Supported browsers:
  • Internet Explorer 11
  • Microsoft Edge
  • Firefox
  • Chrome
  • Safari
  • Opera
• Application to install: No
• Designed for use on mobile devices: Yes
• Differences between the mobile and desktop service: Responsive formatting on mobile devices.
• Service interface: No
• User support accessibility: WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
• API: Yes
• What users can and can't do using the API: HELM includes APIs for linking to staff rostering tools, for example Active Directory, for the purposes of user validation and single sign on. HELM also includes APIs for linking with CRM tools, for example Microsoft Dynamics. All APIs are developed and maintained internally, with an API customisation service offered to clients if required.
• API documentation: Yes
• API documentation formats: PDF
• API sandbox or test environment: Yes
• Customisation available: Yes
• Description of customisation: Buyers can customise: Logos, overall style and branding, web addresses, user interface display modes, registration data types and fields, administrator/manager roles & permission and hierarchies, reporting tools and data export, learning pathways as a factor of job type or learning requirements, organisation of content into 'Core' and 'Standard' categories, archiving and retrieval of users/user data. Customisation options are restricted to client admin.

Scaling

• Independence of resources: HELM is scaled according to demand in one of two ways: Horizontal scaling - adding more server nodes. Vertical scaling - increasing server resources. Server resource usage is monitored and as demand increases more resources are allocated accordingly.

Analytics

• Service usage metrics: Yes
• Metrics types: As a learning management system, HELM provides the full range of user analytics and service metrics as standard. These include, but are not limited to: user activity reports, learning progression reports, assessment metrics, multi-site activity reports, global module performance and scoring and completion status. Metrics are provided at user, cohort, job, site and regional levels.
• Reporting types:
  • API access
  • Real-time dashboards
  • Regular reports
  • Reports on request

Resellers

• Supplier type: Not a reseller

Staff security

• Staff security clearance: Conforms to BS7858:2019
• Government security clearance: Up to Developed Vetting (DV)

Asset protection

• Knowledge of data storage and processing locations: Yes
• Data storage and processing locations: United Kingdom
• User control over data storage and processing locations: No
• Datacentre security standards: Complies with a recognised standard (for example CSA CCM version 3.0)
• Penetration testing frequency: At least once a year
• Penetration testing approach: ‘IT Health Check’ performed by a CHECK service provider
• Protecting data at rest: Other
• Other data at rest protection approach: Covered by Amazon's security policies, which are compliant with ISO 27001. Internally, OCB Publishing is compliant with the Cyber Essentials scheme. In the rare instances that external storage such as USB sticks or external hard drives are used they are encrypted.
• Data sanitisation process: Yes
• Data sanitisation type:
  • Explicit overwriting of storage before reallocation
  • Deleted data can’t be directly accessed
• Equipment disposal approach: A third-party destruction service

Data importing and exporting

• Data export approach: HELM includes a data export function as standard.
• Data export formats:
  • CSV
  • Other
• Other data export formats:
  • HTML
  • PDF
• Data import formats: CSV

Data-in-transit protection

• Data protection between buyer and supplier networks: TLS (version 1.2 or above)
• Data protection within supplier network: TLS (version 1.2 or above)

Availability and resilience

• Guaranteed availability: HELM is provided on the assumption of 99.9% guaranteed availability within a calendar month. If HELM is unavailable to this level then client accounts are credited as follows: Equal to or greater then 99.0% but less than 99.9% - 10% credit Less than 99.0% - 25% credit.
• Approach to resilience: HELM uses AWS servers: https://aws.amazon.com/security/ If there is a problem with the database server, we can restore it to any point in the last 30 days, to the nearest 5 minutes. For additional resilience we can, if requested by the client, use multiple database servers in a similar way that we use multiple web server nodes.
• Outage reporting: Alerts are configured in AWS Cloudfront to alert of periods of high resource demand. Pingdom is used to alert when the platform is down.

Identity and authentication

• User authentication needed: Yes
• User authentication: Username or password
• Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels: Server management interface is accessible only by HELM developers, and they only have access to what directly concerns them. In software, all access is controlled using the default WordPress mechanisms i.e. roles and capabilities. Support channels are usually handled by our clients, but in rare cases where clients use our Jira installation they connect via their Atlassian accounts. Clients are only able to view projects which they are associated with.
• Access restriction testing frequency: At least every 6 months
• Management access authentication:
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Public key authentication (including by TLS client certificate)
  • Username or password

Audit information for users

• Access to user activity audit information: Users have access to real-time audit information
• How long user audit data is stored for: User-defined
• Access to supplier activity audit information: Users have access to real-time audit information
• How long supplier audit data is stored for: User-defined
• How long system logs are stored for: User-defined

Standards and certifications

• ISO/IEC 27001 certification: No
• ISO 28000:2007 certification: No
• CSA STAR certification: No
• PCI certification: No
• Cyber essentials: Yes
• Cyber essentials plus: Yes
• Other security certifications: No

Security governance

• Named board-level person responsible for service security: Yes
• Security governance certified: No
• Security governance approach: HELM complies with the HSCIC Information Governance Toolkit Level 2 requirements.
• Information security policies and processes: We use an internally derived information security policy at present which adheres to basic best practices. We are investigating becoming compliant with ISO 27001 or a similar standard.

Operational security

• Configuration and change management standard: Supplier-defined controls
• Configuration and change management approach: All code is version-controlled through Git. All database changes are able to be rolled back through backups if necessary.
• Vulnerability management type: Supplier-defined controls
• Vulnerability management approach: Server vulnerabilities are patched through Ubuntu’s apt repositories. WordPress and associated plugins are kept updated via auto update process. Critical patches are deployed on release day, non-critical patches are assessed and deployed within a week. We get information on potential threats from various industry blogs as well as WordPress vendors who focus on security such as WordFence and iThemes.
• Protective monitoring type: Supplier-defined controls
• Protective monitoring approach: Amazon Cloudwatch monitoring to monitor availability. iThemes Security, WordPress Security Audit Log and our own audit logging for identifying compromises. On discovering a compromise our actions and speed in taking them would depend on its severity. In critical cases such as where a server could be hijacked, the server would be suspended immediately until a patch could be deployed.
• Incident management type: Supplier-defined controls
• Incident management approach: We use Jira internally and open it to clients when they don’t have a solution of their own, but this is rare. Most of our clients already have incident management processes and include is in theirs. In all cases the service being used is Zendesk.

Secure development

• Approach to secure software development best practice: Conforms to a recognised standard, but self-assessed

Public sector networks

• Connection to public sector networks: No

Social Value

• Social Value:

  Social Value

  Fighting climate change

  Fighting climate change

  One of the key objectives of the HELM learning management system is provide NHS healthcare staff and healthcare students with online access to a range of evidence based, peer reviewed core skills, medicines management and leadership (amongst others) e-learning modules, without the need to physically attend face-to-face training sessions. As such HELM has a significantly reduced carbon footprint as learners are not required to travel to and from HELM training sessions.

Pricing

• Price: £1.98 to £40 a user a year
• Discount for educational organisations: Yes
• Free trial available: Yes
• Description of free trial: Free trials can be provided for both users and administrators on a separate trial instance. In both cases the trial provides full access to all elements of HELM for a 1 month period, which can be extended on request.

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at nic@ocbpublishing.com. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.