Introduction: NextDose is a web based dosing tool (www.nextdose.org) that was developed at the University of Auckland (UoA) in 2012 (Holford et al., 2012). The tool provides a target concentration approach to dosing, currently for 17 medicines. The most frequently used are vancomycin, busulfan, gentamicin and warfarin. The tool is provided at no cost to the user. In 2021 the University of Auckland decided not to host the NextDose servers. An approach was made to Health New Zealand (Te Whatu Ora) to take over management, but this was considered too challenging. Subsequently the University of Otago (UoO) agreed to accept responsibility for hosting NextDose in 2023.
Challenges: The transfer process involved challenges for both UoA and UoO including: a data transfer agreement, a privacy agreement, obtaining permission for transfer of data from NextDose users as data controllers, a secure data transfer method, implementation of a production and development server at UoO, a common agreement for timeline and transfer tasks, checking and resolving corporate records and cybersecurity requirements at UoO, re-direction of the www.nextdose.org URL to nextdose.otago.ac.nz and finally transfer of the www.nextdose.org domain to the global domain name server network.
Solutions: Finding solutions to these challenges involved several organisational units at both universities and included external consultant advice. The secure data transfer of NextDose was achieved using the Globus Data Transfer system. Implementation of Privacy requirements led to a “cleanup” of records stored in the NextDose database and data file storage.
The Transfer: NextDose was transferred from UoA to UoO on 3 March 2025 with an associated outage of 8h30min. The transfer involved a snapshot of the database and data file storage which allowed users to resume using NextDose exactly as they had been doing until minutes before the transfer started.
Post Transfer: NextDose has been running continuously since restarting on 3 March 2025. No problems have been detected that are attributable to the transfer process.
Acknowledgements: Many people were involved in the successful management of the transfer. This includes the authors of this abstract and staff at UoA (Warwick Bagg, Malcolm Tingle, Jacqueline Hannam, Nick Kearns, Nicola Johnstone, Warren Grant, Graham Kean, Sefo Pouli-Lefale), UoO (Darren Hart, Greg Trounson, Tasha Derrett, Nour Gamri, Tanya Corporate Records) and Health New Zealand (Laura Hopley, Theo Loach). The feedback from NextDose users and PAGANZ members has been essential to the development and acceptance of NextDose.
References:
Holford, S. D., Turkistani, A., Madhavaram, H., & Holford, N. H. G. (2012). NextDose – A web based collaborative tool for dose individualisation. PAGANZ http://www.paganz.org/abstract/1295, Accessed 9 April 2025.