Custom app development for incident investigation
Investigating after an incident means reconstructing a timeline from sources that fade quickly: what a colleague remembers, how a room was set up, which equipment hung where. Those sources are worth less after a week and are often gone after a month, yet the report is only written later.
Why the first days are decisive
After a notification, the inspectorate often requires the care provider to carry out its own investigation and report on it within a set deadline. That investigation must reconstruct what happened, which factors played a role and which measures follow from them.
The difficulty is not the analysis but the material. A colleague's recollection is more detailed on day two than on day fourteen, and the situation on site cannot be photographed once it has been cleaned up. Anyone who waits until the committee convenes is working with material that has already faded.
In practice, gathering evidence is therefore ad hoc: notes in a notebook, photos on a personal phone, conversation records in loose documents. This works until the report has to be written and nobody knows which note belongs to which moment, or until the inspectorate asks how a conclusion was substantiated.
How we build this
The event on the timeline is the unit here. If every piece of material is tied to a moment, the report largely writes itself from the timeline.
We look at how an investigation currently runs, what gets recorded and on which devices that ends up. The last point is almost always a personal phone.
Not a form with fields but a timeline to which sources are attached: a conversation, a file entry, a photo, a log entry from a device.
Who was spoken to, when, and whether that person has seen the account. This is not a formality but the basis on which a conclusion holds up.
What has been collected on site goes into the file from which the report and the reporting to the inspectorate follow.
What the app does in practice
The app collects in the days when the material still exists. Which components you need depends on how often you investigate and with how many people.
Timeline with sources attached
Every piece of material is tied to a moment: a statement, a photo, a file entry. This way the reconstruction takes shape while gathering evidence rather than afterwards.
Conversations recorded carefully
Who, when, about what, and whether the account was returned to the person concerned. A conclusion resting on a conversation whose account was never confirmed does not hold up under scrutiny.
Situation on site with timestamp
How the room was set up, where which equipment hung, what lay where. After one cleaning round that can no longer be fixed, and the question has become unanswerable.
Working offline
An investigation takes place on a ward, at a client's home or in a technical room. The app keeps working offline and syncs later, recording the actual time.
Strict separation of those involved
Material about staff and material about the patient are handled separately, with their own rights. An investigation is not a personnel file, even though it concerns the actions of people.
Passing it on to the inspection file
The timeline and sources end up in the file you report from, via integrations. That file is available at IGJ software.
Who we build for
Who carries out the investigation, and where, varies greatly. Four situations.
Hospitals with a standing committee
There is a methodology and there are trained investigators. The bottleneck is the period between the report and the first meeting, during which material fades without anyone collecting it.
Long-term care with multiple locations
The investigator travels and speaks to people in different places. Without one place to attach everything to, there end up being as many collections as there are locations.
District nursing and outpatient care
The investigation concerns something that happened in someone's home, with no cameras and no colleague present. Statements are then almost the only material, so how carefully they are recorded matters.
External investigators
If you have the investigation carried out by a third party, you want the sources in your own file, not just the final report. If the inspectorate asks a follow-up question, you are the one who has to answer.
Test your idea first: a working prototype in 1 day
With OneDayBuild, we turn your idea into something tangible in one day for €1,150, so you can see whether further development is worth the investment. Decide to go ahead with the full build? Then we credit the full cost.
Explore OneDayBuild →Technology and integrations
The app is the field side of your investigation process, not a methodology. You decide which investigation method to use; we build the collecting and recording around it.
Why Appfront
Material fades faster than your deadline runs
We focus the app on the first few days, because a memory from day two is not the same as one from day fourteen.
A conclusion is only as strong as its source
For each conversation we record whether the account was played back to the person concerned. Without that, a conclusion won't hold up under scrutiny.
An investigation is not a personnel file
Material about the conduct of staff gets its own rights and its own retention period, separate from the patient material.
The timeline is the report in the making
We build the reconstruction up during collection, so that writing becomes a selection rather than a reconstruction from scattered notes.
Security and privacy
This is the most sensitive material a care organisation collects, and it temporarily sits on a device that goes out to the department with the team. We limit offline storage to the investigation at hand, tie permissions to the investigator rather than the device, and make sure a lost device can be remotely disconnected without halting the investigation.
The separation between types of people involved matters more here than in any other file. An investigation concerns both what happened to a patient and how staff acted, and that second category touches their employment rights. We keep these apart with their own rights and their own retention periods, and we do not build a field for judgements about individuals; the app records observations and statements. What is recorded must be unalterable, because a statement that can be updated afterwards is not a statement. How we handle security ourselves is set out in our information security policy; reports from outside come through our vulnerability disclosure policy.
Frequently asked questions about the investigation app
No. The app gathers and orders the material on a timeline; the report and analysis are human work and should remain so. What it saves you is that writing becomes a selection from the timeline rather than a reconstruction from loose notes and photos on different phones.
No, and that is deliberate. The method you use is for your committee to decide. We build the gathering and recording around it, so the app works whichever methodology you apply and keeps working if you change it.
Carefully, because their employment position depends on it. We record who was spoken to, when and about what, and whether the account has been played back to the person concerned. That last point is not a formality: a conclusion resting on an unconfirmed account will not hold up under scrutiny.
That depends on what appears in the frame and on your own policy. A room or a device is different from a person or a record on a screen. We set those rules in the app per type of recording, so the investigator does not have to weigh them up on the spot.
Yes, and then it is especially useful. An external investigator can work under their own roles, while the sources end up in your file. If the inspectorate asks a follow-up question, you are the one who must answer, and at that point you want more than the final report.
The incident reporting app is for the shop floor and concerns the first minute: someone reports that something has happened. This app is for the investigator and concerns the days that follow. They meet at the report that sets the investigation in motion.
In the file from which you report to the inspectorate; see IGJ software. The app is the field side of that and keeps no archive of its own, because two places holding the same investigation will inevitably drift apart.
That depends on how often you investigate, whether external investigators need to take part, and how heavy the interview recording is. The timeline with photos and statements is usually quick to put to use; the separate permissions and the integration cost more. We give you a reasoned estimate after the discovery phase.
Gathering material before it fades?
At your most recent investigation, ask where the photos from the first day are stored. If the answer is a personal phone, that is the problem. We build this as a standalone app and as part of a wider custom app or custom software project.