Provide a brief description of the Solution, Service Provided, or Initiative?
Nurses for tomorrow is a proactive human resource analysis process that is used to predict unit specific nurse, and other health care professional staffing patterns and utilization to facilitate resource allocation, and proactive hiring decisions across multi-site health care organizations. These analyses are used to monitor the progress of targeted nurse and other health professional recruitment and retention strategies at unit, organizational, regional and provincial levels. When Nurses for Tomorrow (N4T) approached Navantis, they did not have a solid understanding of the possible technologies which can be used as a platform to build their required solution. Thus, Navantis advised a two phase approach; Phase 1 – Navantis educated N4T of the possible technology choices, including the advantages and pitfalls of technology. Navantis then helped N4T discover their complete feature set, and provided an in depth solution feature requirement document that outlined all of their required features and provided them with a priority scoring of those features. In this phase, Navantis also delivered cost estimates of various technology platform approaches. Phase 2 – Working on site, Navantis employed a pure agile software development process to ensure the customer was deeply involved in the entire application development lifecycle. The solution utilized various .net based technologies that were integrated to provide the complete feature set required within the budget and time constraints. Technologies Used • ASP.Net MVC 1.0 • Entity Framework 4.0 • SQL Server 2005 • Checkbox (ASP.Net and SQL Server 2005 3rd party application)
Describe what makes this Solution, Service Provided, or Initiative original or innovative?
Because this solution requires that multiple customers of N4T enter data at unique intervals in time, the reporting becomes complex if the data model is not properly represented in the database. This complexity of reporting and the flexibility requirements led us to develop a reporting framework using SQL Server reporting services integrated with a third party .net survey solution, and required numerous extension points and integration points with Checkbox. Navantis used some unique database design patterns to implement a flexible and robust solution that will ensure data privacy, yet still allow for each organization and the overall program leads to be able to report on, and access the data they require. The new data design and data access approaches used that are being adopted throughout Navantis leverage ASP.Net MVC and the Entity Framework.
Describe the improvement this Solution, Service Provided, or Initiative made to the customer’s sales or revenues. What changed?
N4T is a non-profit organization. As such, our solution did not impact the customer’s revenues. However, the solution did improve N4T’s overall efficiency, which we have detailed below, and, as a result, decreased the cost of doing business.
Describe the improvement this Solution, Service Provided, or Initiative made to the customer’s efficiency. What changed?
This new solution allows for complex analysis algorithms to be integrated directly into data gathering and processing of the surveys. Reports could thus be pre-configured and data analyzed with minimal human intervention, eliminating any human error and increasing time efficiency for managers. As the old solution only dealt with UHN, reporting could only be rolled up a certain levels without a lot of manual rework. New solution allowed metrics to be aggregated at various levels from the unit, hospital, hospital group, LHIN, or even province. This also allows them to delegate some of the work (like user and unit management) to administrative users at the client site. In addition, previously any changes to the surveys required development work, and could not be extended to additional clients. The new solution allows survey modification through various administrative pages, and allows for the creation of new customers that could use the same survey or have new surveys created for them.
How did this Solution, Service provided, or Initiative improve the customer’s ability to serve its internal and/or external clients?
This solution has helped the N4T achieve a greater internal efficiency, as it is now able to accurately predict staffing requirements in the future. This will benefit both the internal and external environments as nurses will not be better allocated to the correct unit at the opportune time. As the system is fully automated, this will eliminate any human error and allow the manager to make informed, accurate staffing decisions. This benefits nurses, as they will experience less lags in assignments. In addition, this will also benefit patients, as they will no longer feel the effects of a short hand staffing unit.
In what ways does this Solution or Service Provided go above and beyond industry norms and expectations?
This solution has surpassed industry expectations with its unique survey collection and reporting capabilities, as explained above. The solution is also praised for its complex and customizable data analysis.
How does this solution further your customer’s green or environmentally friendly plans?
This solution helps to further our customer’s green plans, as it allows them to reduce their printing. As surveys are automatically processed into reports online, this eliminates the need to print off data for analysis. Overall, this adds to the green initiatives for the hospital.
