Social distancing, virtual doctors’ appointments and data scientists predicting disease. What do these three, seemingly disconnected, things have in common? They’re all outcomes of the monumental changes we’re seeing in 2020, as the world grapples with the century’s worst health crisis. Regardless of the drivers, the year is seeing us all embrace change at an alarmingly rapid rate, with the medical sector seeing the biggest overhaul. With this in mind, we look at the biggest healthcare trends in 2020; a rundown of the primarily digital changes of an industry in transformation.
The biggest healthcare trends in 2020 | Digital transformation in health
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technology
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Balancing care and costs, rostering in Care Homes
Post COVID-19, Rostering in Care Homes will never be the same.
Care homes are a vital cog of the UK healthcare industry, with more than 12,250 in existence for personal care and nursing care. Even in a time of normalcy, their two biggest pain points that lead to facilities closing are falling standards, as a result of shortages in the staff, and the cost of staff increasing.
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scheduling
employees
flexibility
flexible working
motivate staff
employee empowerment
employee engagement
technology
healthcare
health
rostering
hospitals
nurses
nursing homes
rota
care homes
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Rotageek WFM software and Locum's Nest staff bank solution integrate
Rotageek's partnership with bank staff platform hopes to accelerate the digitisation of NHS workforce management
Today, two leading technology companies have announced a new partnership designed to improve staffing across the whole of the NHS.
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scheduling
workforce management
HR technology
technology
healthcare
staff bank
rostering
roster
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Rotageek's scheduling software secures £6m Series B investment
Rotageek’s workforce management software attracts £6m new investment
The funding round will be used for further expansion into the global workforce management market valued at over £3bn.
Free trials of its proprietary solutions are being offered to the NHS to assist in supporting medical teams which are facing exceptionally complex scheduling.
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"retail"
artificial intelligence
business operations
workforce management
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Geek Speak: Managing fatigue in your healthcare team's rotas
Managing fatigue in your healthcare team's rotas.
We know that the fatigue of healthcare professionals directly affects the safety and quality of care received by patients [1] and that the reason for fatigue among these people is often the result of rotas that are created to satisfy too much patient demand with too few staff and the resultant output places more shifts or hours onto these workers as the patients must be treated!
In the U.K we work with a number of NHS & other healthcare practices and are familiar with the the junior doctor contract and working time directives set our for those professionals and while they do set some hard rules to prevent the worst instances of rota-caused fatigue, we often hear that they do not provide enough guidance to schedule-makers to determine when a combination of different schedule factors can leave doctors overtired and patients at risk.
The Australian Medical Association National Code of Practice defines a risk score that can be used to assess every seven days of a rota [2]. The risk score was validated and the factors were found to be associated with excessive sleepiness [3].
Here at Rotageek we decided to help our healthcare teams plan better schedules by implementing the AMA risk score into our schedule analysis tools. It can be used in real time while making a schedule to warn when a particular doctor passes a threshold risk score or when the group of doctors on shift have an average risk score above some threshold. It can also be used to look across an entire rota period to spot trends in risk score to identify problem spots (see below image).
As we look to solve some of the issues we hear again and again from healthcare professionals, this is just one example of the features we have built (& are building) to reduce admin and rota planning and allow more time with patients!
If you have any questions about how we approach scheduling in healthcare, please don't hesitate to get in touch via
hello@rotageek.com!
References:
[1] West CP, Tan AD, Habermann TM, Sloan JA, Shanafelt TD. Association of Resident Fatigue and Distress With Perceived Medical Errors. JAMA. 2009;302(12):1294–1300. doi:10.1001/jama.2009.1389
[3] Gander P, Purnell H, Garden A, Woodward A. Work patterns and fatigue-related risk among junior doctors. Occup Environ Med. 2007;64(11):733–738. doi:10.1136/oem.2006.030916
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artificial intelligence
business operations
workforce management
data science
HR technology
technology
healthcare
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Geek Speak: COVID-19: we are in this together
COVID-19: we are in this together
We are certainly in unprecedented times, and while we have all had to make adjustments to the way we live our daily lives; staying indoors more often, working remotely from the comfort of our dining tables, sofas or sheds (like me) and practising social distancing, there are still countless critical employees in the retail and healthcare industries that are tirelessly working in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis.
Rotageek was born out of the NHS and my old A&E department back in 2006, when I was searching for better ways to make, manage and communicate rotas to team members and while we have grown over the last decade into the retail, hospitality and leisure industries, we feel our solution is vital to the healthcare industry now, more than ever. As we have been thinking about how Rotageek can offer help and support to these teams in such uncertain times; as the situation changes by the hour and as patient numbers only increase, we can see how what we do day in day out here will help to streamline processes and communication flows in teams in peak demand.
How can Rotageek help? For those teams and companies affected by COVID-19, we’re offering access to our Digital Scheduling Solution at no cost, no obligation, and no strings attached for the duration of the crisis. We have a team of passionate & smart people based around the 🌏 who spend their days thinking about scheduling and we genuinely want to help.
Currently, we are hearing from medical rota managers that they are overwhelmed with co-ordinating entirely new rotas, adding additional staff whose availability is rapidly changing and trying to keep shifts filled in the face of overwhelming demand. We can take some of this workload!
How we can help you:
- Changes to schedules are immediately published to all affected team members when approved on schedule by the manager.
- Staff can drop shifts to broadcast them to other available team members to pick up if possible.
- Rota Managers can broadcast available shifts & the mobile app notifies available employees.
- As many separate rotas as you like (e.g. for segmented groups or different skill areas).
- Simple transfer team members between locations.
- Set up validations on assigning team members to the wrong location for their current status.
- Staff can easily be added or transferred between & even can work in multiple locations in a day or week.
- Patterns and copy-shift features can be used to populate schedules for new wards quickly and easily.
We have a simple & hands-on approach to onboarding and will need minimal input from you and your team. We will have you up and running within 24 hours and be on hand for support 7 days a week.
If you'd like to know more, please do contact us immediately. If you know someone who is working extremely hard at the moment and could use some help then please do share this message! 👍
Thrive x Rotageek partner to offer free tailored therapeutic webinars
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artificial intelligence
business operations
workforce management
data science
HR technology
technology
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Geek Speak: COVID-19 x Fairly distribute reduced hours
Fair hours distribution of team hours when demand has significantly dropped.
Topics:
artificial intelligence
business operations
workforce management
data science
HR technology
technology
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COVID-19 x Algorithms to reduce infection exposure in the workplace
in the workplace.
Topics:
artificial intelligence
business operations
workforce management
data science
HR technology
technology
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Geek Speak: Technophobia
The perplexing argument against the rise of digital technology
You wake gently to an artificial simulation of daylight in your bedroom, timed perfectly to your sleep schedule, accompanied by the soft sounds of birds singing in nearby rustling trees. However, reality outside stands in stark contrast, as the sounds of nature are instead replaced by garbage trucks and ambulances – where the sun rarely braves the cold to show its face in moody London.
Then, simply by uttering the words “Good morning Alexa,” you signal the beginning of your personalised automated daily routine via voice recognition.
The lights in your bedroom brighten to full capacity after having lifted you peacefully from your slumber, your Spotify playlist ‘Morning Motivation’ begins playing throughout your home and your coffee begins to brew as you run a shower. You open an app that has pre-planned your outfits for the week as Alexa moves on to report the estimated time of arrival to work and the best public transport route before broadcasting the latest news podcast you’re subscribed to. You pre-order a second coffee to go from Starbucks, picking it up from the collection point on your way to the tube and avoid the line of commuters needing their caffeine fix.
You arrive early to work, scanning your fingerprint via a biometric terminal to clock into your office job where you jump straight into a virtual video meeting with colleagues in New York and Melbourne via a 70-inch conference room screen. You share your screens and map out workflows via the virtual whiteboard. Meanwhile, your smart watch vibrates and informs you that you need to begin making your way to your next meeting and you turn to your colleagues and remark:
“What on Earth would we do without technology?”
