A hospital patient demands the assistance of healthcare personnel. Press the On-Demand button, which sends a request for attention to the manager's field app and, in turn, to the control centre. The task is automatically registered in the system: "Pending". The person in charge of responding to the request notifies, via the app, that the subject is "Being attended", which is also reflected in the control centre panel. Once the incident has been addressed, the person in charge completes a checklist associated with the task protocol and marks it as completed. Immediately, the task changes status again, this time to "Completed". Furthermore, in the BackOffice, all the information has been recorded (changes in status, history, response time, distances travelled...).
The On-Demand button is a button to request care. It is located in beds of patients and works through a remote service request system that, by implementing IoT technology, makes it possible to communicate in real time with the nursing centre or person responsible for care. The result is: real-time response, optimisation of the patient care process, recording and a history of the tasks generated, and monitoring and analysis through reports. What makes this possible? CheckingPlan, adapting its functionalities to help in the response and global monitoring of the services of hospitals and health centres, both in tasks related to cleaning and maintenance, security, customer service and, as in this case, health care itself. Technology changes the relationship between the patient and the healthcare team but also, within the structure of the hospital itself, becomes an aid in managing other general services.
Let's take another example, this time of tasks related to cleaning a hospital, specifically, in the collection and distribution of the laundry service: disinfection of sheets, towels, patient gowns, uniforms, etc. CheckingPlan allows you to trace the collection and delivery process, creating collection routes in BackOffice. The person in charge of the task must generate the data at the time through the app so that the activity report can be generated. For example, during the collection of the material, where it comes from is identified by scanning with the app an NFC tag that identifies the room. At that moment, the person in charge accesses a form in which they must indicate the type and quantity of clothes, number of bags, date and time, and weight. Once the material is sterilised, its replacement in the warehouse is processed in a very similar way: the operator reads the NFC tag of the warehouse with the app and will gain access to a form in which they will indicate the details of the garments, other observations, and the signing in of service reports to establish an interim inventory record.
CheckingPlan and the management of general services in hospitals
CheckingPlan responds to different types of tasks, from those that are on demand – that is, required outside of planning, as in the case of the On-Demand button – to those that are planned, such as the collection and delivery of the laundry service; incidents and notices of a specific deficiency that requires monitoring of its resolution; and those that are automated, which are those activated by sensorisation of the environment, such as, for example, the capacity control of a given space.
The tool also allows you to configure as many tasks as you need, all organised by type and with protocols that facilitate and optimise their execution. Tasks are scheduled in BackOffice, and the platform is responsible for tracing all the services. In this way, CheckingPlan adapts its functionalities to respond to different activities related to:
- Hospital care
- Management of collection and distribution of instruments for sterilisation
- Indoor/outdoor location of assets, patients and staff.
- People-counting cameras by artificial intelligence and WiFi counting.
- Table for transfers of patients, equipment and/or documentation.
- Discharges of patients.
- Laundry service.
- Fall detection.
- Reviews and quality controls.
- Request for nursing care.
- Temperature control chambers.
- Collection of hospital, biosanitary and pathogens waste.
But if management is important, so is its monitoring. This is why CheckingPlan assigns a checklist or verification questionnaire to each task, which helps to generate tailor-made data with relevant information for each task: date, time, place, active operators, managers and/or personnel involved, duration, displacement times, delays and possible resulting incidents. A complete map of what is happening and how it is happening helps to optimise each process, evaluate the quality of services, and improve the productivity of the centre.