Rotamap 2019 Autumn event
October 2019
Rotamap’s 2019 Autumn Event was held at Farmers & Fletchers in Central London on Friday 4th October. The event featured presentations from the Rotamap team and guest speaker Patrick Addison, Consultant Plastic Surgeon from NHS Lothian. The day was designed for users to share ideas and also learn about projects in development. The Rotamap team in turn had the opportunity to explore and understand challenges often faced by users of our services, who were invited to suggest topics for discussion.
Iona Wickens and Adam Cansfield started the day with a description of Rotamap’s approach to design in the Trust setting - getting to the very essence of often complex problems with a simple solution, and releasing it to users promptly. These simple changes provide immediate benefit, and are then iterated on with user guidance to create richer features. Adam and Iona referred to the messaging infrastructure as an exemplar of this. Initially, this was designed to simply send out crucial messages about late notice changes to clinicians. This solution became the foundation for many iterations shaped by users and their experiences, resulting in a comprehensive feature which now interacts with a number of other features, such as bids and leave.
Attendee initiated discussions, October 2019
Joel Moore and Rebecca Litherland from the Rotamap team continued with a presentation on new features. They described how mixing up the workload between smaller and larger projects can be extremely beneficial, and has seen a number of iterative and useful improvements made to Medirota, CLWRota, Overviews and Central Reporting over the last few months.
Following this was Patrick Addison, a Consultant Plastic Surgeon and Rotamaster at NHS Lothian, Edinburgh. Patrick discussed his experience of Medirota, from procurement and implementation to its current and future use within the department. He outlined some of the originally anticipated benefits from Medirota’s implementation such as less time spent rostering, fewer errors and improved communication. Further to this, he noted increased productivity, improved training opportunities for junior doctors and fairer distribution of work. Of particular note was how Medirota had helped to transform patient flow in the department, especially with regard to waiting list initiatives. A video of Patrick's presentation will soon be released.
Patrick Addison presents at the Rotamap Autumn 2019 event
There was a segment of the morning session dedicated to discussing topics which mattered most to users, based on suggestions submitted at the beginning of the day. Among some of the topics discussed were planned rotas vs reality, leave accounting, managing junior doctors and using reports and data to improve service. Although members of the Rotamap team were there to help facilitate discussion, this was an invaluable opportunity for the team to listen to users discuss challenges they face, how they navigate these currently, and how they might do so in the future with our help. The discussions were fruitful for both the team and users alike.
Following lunch, attention turned to some of Rotamap's ongoing plans and projects. Members of the team updated attendees on progress and were able to garner crucial insight from future potential users of these new developments. Nick Edgeworth started the afternoon with a presentation on submittals, which will help departments flow information about leave and extra work to central teams. Tom Bermejo then discussed his time calculation tool which will allow departments to see the real-time impact of assigning clinicians to a particular session, including any potential breaches to configurable rulesets for departments. Jacob Kirk then presented shifts, which will allow precise start and end times and shift-based work to be incorporated into the current sessional structure. Peter Barwick finished this section of the afternoon with a presentation on our approach to job planning in Medirota and CLWRota.
The day closed with informal discussions over drinks. Highlights from each of the talks can be found here. If you would like to attend Rotamap’s next event, or discuss any of the topics above, please email info@rotamap.net.
Agenda
The agenda for the event was as follows:
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Welcome and introduction
Iona Wickens and Adam Cansfield, Rotamap
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New and upcoming features
Joel Moore and Rebecca Litherland, Rotamap
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Medirota - our experience
Patrick Addison, Consultant Plastic Surgeon at NHS Lothian, Edinburgh
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Attendee initiated discussion
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Submittals
Nick Edgeworth, Rotamap
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Working time calculations
Tom Bermejo, Rotamap
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Shifts
Jacob Kirk, Rotamap
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Job planning
Peter Barwick, Rotamap
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Future opportunities