Boston University’s Environmental Health & Safety (EHS) department provides a full range of environmental, health, and safety services to the Boston University and Boston Medical Center (BMC) communities. EHS provides these services through a wide variety of activities, including:
- Inspections of all spaces on the Charles River Campus, Boston University Medical Campus, and some spaces at Boston Medical Center, including issue tracking and follow up
- Organization of research and safety equipment, including items such as fume hoods and eye washes
- Tracking of hazardous chemicals, radioisotopes, and other
- Management of information about authorization to use radioisotopes
- Training courses, and management of training compliance for research safety
Over the course of the last few years, IS&T & EHS worked with the vendor BioRAFT to rollout six modules of a new environmental health and safety information systems from BioRAFT. By implementing this system, support for these critical activities was improved. For example, in the first 6 months after Boston University introduced BioRAFT for the management of training, researchers had an average reduction in effort of 60% in most EHS compliance-related tasks, based on researchers’ responses to surveys sent out before and after BioRAFT implementation (tasks were previously performed in the RIMS system).
In addition, compliance rates for required safety trainings tracked in BioRAFT have improved substantially. The ability to run reports easily on training compliance and all other areas managed in BioRAFT has improved efficiency within EHS, as well as EHS’s ability to support a culture of safety across the University.
Boston University EHS continues to work with BioRAFT on evaluating the effectiveness of BioRAFT in reducing administrative burdens on researchers, while improving health and safety for the entire Boston University community.