RotaTrack2 Fully automated rotas, with a proven record of 8 years uninterrupted use
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Cardinal Newman Positio Super Virtutibus - the documentary case for canonisation
Twenty one ago we were invited to use our computing expertise to provide a cost
effective solution to the production of a book in support of Canonisation.
DeskTop Publishing was in its infancy and with only 8MB of RAM the norm -
anything more than 4 pages was wildly optimistic. OCR was theoretically
possible to hold down costs but the first machines were still in development.
And the
book ran to 490 pages.
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A familiar story now with our RotaTrack product. Full automation is impossible
(we are told) and anyway its not desirable - tell that to Derby Hospital with
its 40+ Theatres. Costs need to be driven down - that
’s familiar too. In a similar time period, we will all look back and smile at the
equipment used with RotaTrack now , the solution and the improvements. But to
do that we need to aim high and press forward regardless.
“...if we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we
shall never begin
”.
Ivan Turgenev.
We are now free to comment publicly on what was an incredibly complex task: OCR
was feasible but we could not find anyone who had done a serious job and in any
event no OCR scanners were available. And the software available was slow and
crashed frequently. But with the calm influence and resolve of Father Blehl,
(Postulator, responsible for drawing up the Positio or documentary case for
Newman's canonisation) his general availability, and for three weeks his
presence on-site we got the job done. And that is wanted now to achieve similar
genuine savings and success with RotaTrack. In a word tenacity.
Only full automation provides consistency, fairness and demonstrable clinical
governance for Trainees
& Consultants.
RotaTrack is the only rota system that delivers full automation. Users decide
how much or how little automation is appropriate. Full automation frees up
Consultant and Admin. time, devolving control away from the individual into the
Group. Automation provides consistency and fairness and the absence of a
delegated individual does not affect rota production.
RotaTrack matches the precisely defined skills to the complexity of task to be
performed.
It checks who is available and qualified, what limitations such as (EWTD)
European Working Time Directive apply - avoiding a possible
£5,000 fine for every infraction. RotaTrack also checks on-call duties and associated off duty demands, training
requirements, personal preferences, services requirements etc.
Data can be stored and accessed for records and reporting - on your own site and
under your control.
Forward projections allow future changes to be replicated to assess the impact – extra staff, less staff, theatres down, the impact on training or service and
many other situations.
RotaTrack is based on a powerful relational database involving millions of
calculations.
It’s not a crude search system that sieves data leaving the user to make the right
choice.
Such systems are dumb in so much as they need a living breathing human brain to
pick the right option.
RotaTrack Lite does this and outperforms anything else we have seen for just £7,500.
The new version of RotaTrack has links to most SQL based products from other software developers. SQL is fast
becoming a standard requirement with IT departments. And of course we can take
in Excel information from external sources. Over the past few years management
control has become an increasing issue. In recognition of this RotaTrack
features reports on all departmental activities, these include: details on
sessions, training and all diary events. Many of the reports are available in
Excel form which makes the data easy to edit and re-process elsewhere. With
hospitals needing to balance
training against working hours, RotaTrack is invaluable with its user definable
rules always filling training slots with appropriate staff from defined modules
and producing reports to verify this.
Evidence based clinical governance is becoming critical and apart from its
reporting facilities the RotaTrack
‘Away Group’ concept helps hospitals to grasp the nettle.
RotaTrack, with browser server links, opens the door further to options such as
an external leave booking system allowing staff to check departmental
commitments from home and then apply, knowing the likely outcome. iPhone links
and similar, from outside the hospital can be handled. We have many years of
experience delivering browser technology to major Newspapers and Supermarkets
so must point out that there are data security issues, which is your
responsibility. It should be maintained on your site where you have control,
essential if
changing your service supplier. And no we are not paranoid. We have been
challenged on data protection from two consultants who understandably wanted to
know more. And if that is not enough we came across a Florida based company who
specialise in providing medical software services and then farming the
information for other uses - including recruitment.
See the latest video at Youtube.com (just enter Rotatrack in the search box).
High flying RotaTrack with Flying Doctor
The world renowned Flying Doctor Service WA has ordered a customised version of RotaTrack. They expect to gain considerably from the
automation of a complex task that requires maximum flexibility. The forward
projection enables the identification of potential issues at an early stage to
properly assess the complications. Peter Solomons, Technical Director of Studio
Box, explained,
‘We need to turn one part of RotaTrack around and assign by person rather than by
shift. We were already considering this for a Radiology installation, but we
need to make sure that this is the best route and we need to look at the
knock-on effect (RotaTrack needs to complete millions of calculations using
nearly 3,000+ fields and tables in the larger environments).
Australian trials prove RotaTrack efficiencies at £150,000+
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Illustration shows a 13 week rolling shift with cumulative totals as reference points.
Lite is a click & allocate ‘RotaTrack in a box’ for just £7500
Lite is in effect Phase One of a full RotaTrack installation. It provides a
powerful digital diary to track available and unavailable staff. And it flows
Consultants into fixed sessions automatically - it also auto-flows any
available free Consultants on request. The user is then left to manually fill
gaps from drop down menus with Trainees from the lists of available staff
according to service or training requirements.
Free ongoing improvements at Derby.
We have just added a new feature for the prioritisation of specialties in the
auto-allocation of
‘free’ Consultants. This significant ‘extra’ was provided at no cost, in accordance with our improvements policy, despite a
major re-write taking two weeks of programming.The huge recently opened Derby
Hospital installation with over forty theatres/locations to cover are already
using RotaTrack using the latest and more powerful 4D engine.
For a video, a brochure, demonstration (or details of non-medical products) call Adrian Goodman on: (0118) 946 3336
