Software company Hyperoffice has released an automation tool that is helping healthcare providers address staffing issues during the pandemic.

ARMADA – which stands for automated resource matching and deployment application – has been designed to help hospitals and medical facilities with staffing, resource management and deployment.

It’s currently in use at Michael Garron Hospital, a large community hospital in Toronto, where it’s being used to manage redeployment of staff from departments with a surplus, to critical departments experiencing a surge during Covid-19.

ARMADA is enabling the hospital to take disparate data inputs and bring them all together in a standardised, accessible format. Staff have access to this information through a secure platform at a click of a button. It’s resulted in less data errors and avoids miscommunication, duplication of data and effort, as well as needing to repeat communications to people.

“The true problem we were looking to solve was staffing the hospital in the middle of a pandemic” says Taylor Martin, Manager, Clinical Resource Team and New Nursing Initiatives. “If you’re going to be able to provide that critical care to patients who are sick, you need to have the right staff available and assigned where they’re needed. The problem that ARMADA solves at the highest level is making sure that we are adequately staffed and that the resources are allocated appropriately.”

ARMADA has enabled managers across the hospital to enter their daily staff surpluses and requirements. The tool makes a match with a single click, automatically notifying all relevant staff. Additionally historical information on all redeployments are captured in one place, and ready for reporting and payroll purposes.

“My group had the critical role of staff allocation” Taylor said. “We were faced with a continuous flood of data and information across telephone calls, person to person interactions, emails, and Excel spreadsheets from surplus staff eager to help on the one hand, and scores of urgent requests for staff on the other. Add to this further communication for every allocation.

“ARMADA allows us to view and analyse our data in new ways by taking data from literally a piece of paper into a database that we can filter, sort and analyse. It also improves internal communications, reduces phone calls, emails, and meetings because people can view their own data and get the reports when and where they need them. Instead of redundant, transactional conversations, we now have more value-added interactions.”

In addition to ARMADA, Hyperoffice have developed him.ai, automation software that offers hospitals and medical facilities pre-built applications to automate processes typically handled through spreadsheets and other manual mechanisms.

“hims.ai has ever-expanding AI and RPA capabilities that allows our system to learn from the behavior of our users, identify patterns, and automate repetitive processes” says Farzin Arsanjani, President at hims.ai.

We have applied our expertise in AI and in no-code workflow and data management applications to offer the healthcare market pre-built applications that hospitals and other stakeholders can immediately put to work and automate business processes – staff redeployment, new staff onboarding and offboarding, lab data collection and reporting and many others.

“The pandemic created an unprecedented surge of demand and load on operations while shrinking the time to respond to these demands in real time. We view this as an inflection point for both innovation and adoption of technology to automated and streamline manual processes, and to replace mundane bpm tools with intelligent and advanced technologies.”

Looking ahead, Arsanjani says this presents an opportunity for hospitals to become more efficient. “We see tremendous opportunities in applying better workflow, and data management tools, AI and RPA capabilities to improve the unique and specific business processes that each front line healthcare administrator has to employ to keep their operations humming along.

“Achieving this goal requires practical, affordable solutions that can be implemented at unit level, and a level of agile adaptability that is only possible through no-code, AI, and RPA technologies.

It’s no secret that the pandemic has uprooted every cornerstone of our day-to-day life. Consequently, the spread of COVID-19 has required our global healthcare network to rethink operational strategies to meet the crisis’ demands. With the pandemic overwhelming healthcare systems – locally, nationally and globally– the global healthcare network had to rapidly respond to the challenges and upscale their healthcare capabilities to meet the pandemic’s unprecedented demands.

As a manufacturer of key medical equipment, the global pandemic has obviously placed Marathon Medical in a position to help healthcare professionals and their patients in a time of extreme need. However, in a practical sense, it also posed a significant logistical and business challenge: how could we scale our operations quickly enough to meet the need, without either diminishing the quality of these vital products or putting our business in future jeopardy.

This was a challenge facing healthcare suppliers across the globe. Hospitals were running out of ventilators and had to turn away patients due to lack of supplies. Due to this increased demand, analysts predict that the medical supplies market size will reach $100 billion by 2021, a 13.4 per cent increase from 2019.

For us, seamlessly scaling business efforts was necessary at the onset of the pandemic to rapidly increase our production of the most critical items, such as surface disinfectants and ventilators, to the broader medical community.

This obviously posed significant challenges for Marathon Medical, but also for healthcare providers who still needed certainty around the delivery – and future availability – of vital medical equipment.

To tackle this unprecedented challenge, we needed to be nimble enough to pivot support for our customers, which required us to forecast the demand for equipment and supplies, manage inventory effectively and distribute rapidly. This business challenge was only further compounded by the unwavering need to keep up with demand without compromising or reducing quality and safety.

To do this, we placed a significant focus on resource planning and leaned heavily on our cloud-based business management software. We worked in partnership with Sage before the pandemic to help optimize our business, but having ready access to the key data needed to make informed decisions and rapidly scaling our operations has been critical over the past seven months.

Not only did it help us ensure we could develop and deliver the supplies needed to meet the increased demand, but on the distribution side we are able to supply the right number of products, forecast demands and provide accurate, up-to-date information.

It’s this ability to plan – and adjust quickly as needed – which has helped us service the most extensive integrated health care system in the United States, The Veterans Health Administration (VHA), without skipping a beat. It’s also one of the reasons why the federal government was relying on us to provide over $27 million worth of medical syringes, vials and needles to administer a billion COVID-19 vaccines, when one becomes available.

In addition to scaling to meet the immediate global crisis, it was also important that we weren’t making decisions that put our business future at risk or could impact our ability to continue delivering the equipment our existing customers still needed. In this regard, being confident in financial software to automate and streamline invoice and bill collection, minimizing record-keeping redundancies and errors, as well as quantify budget planning has been critical. This allowed us to remain focused on the present crisis and how we can help, while remaining confident that the future of our business remains solid.

Ultimately, technology is enabling us to meet our end of the contract with the Federal Government, and we are honored to be the medical equipment supplier for such an important, life-changing program. Our manufacturers also move us forward; it is their support and commitment to our align mission, and their technology in place to keep the supply chain moving, that enables us to provide excellent products to the broader healthcare community.

The success of Covid-19 vaccines rides on the government quickly catching unexpected side effects that could sicken or kill people who get the shots. That will require sifting through virtual haystacks of information flowing into a wide-ranging set of databases.

The first vaccines by Pfizer and Moderna are expected to produce stronger fever, aches and other side effects than ordinary shots. And unexpected side effects will almost certainly emerge as the vaccines are administered to tens of millions of people.

The Centers for Disease Control has identified a dozen existing safety systems and seven newly developed ones that will collect the information. The various systems are tailored to specific groups such as long-term care patients, service members and veterans. And the whole enterprise is built around patients voluntarily reporting what they’re experiencing on surveys sent to their smartphones.

That feature worries experts concerned that not enough patients and providers will opt in and pass along information under the current system. The stakes are huge because any surprise effects could shake already fragile public confidence in the shots as the pandemic rages through the winter.

“We do need to ask, especially in this initial phase, for everybody in the community to be rowing together,” Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told a meeting of a CDC vaccine advisory committee last week, warning of “extra work” for some groups.

The proliferation of new and old systems will require extensive outreach to affected groups, as well as features such as translation services for the parts of the programs patients will see, both of which CDC says it still plans to address with the vaccine rollout fast approaching.

Susan Bailey, president of the American Medical Association, said doctors are familiar with most of the systems. But she sees room for more guidance about what adverse events need to be reported.

“We anticipate many patients are not going to feel great after the second dose of the vaccine,” she said. “What level of adverse event rises to report?” Health experts say the reporting requirements expose weaknesses in the vaccine delivery infrastructure, which put burdens on already-harried providers.

“The success of the vaccination program will ultimately depend on whether we can get individuals vaccinated, and the biggest threat we have is under-investment in the infrastructure needed to address all the needs in short order,” said Grace Lee, a Stanford Children’s pediatrician and member of the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel. Almost all of the work on the front lines is unfunded, she said, adding, “it’s a huge amount of work.”

Tampa General Hospital is expecting to receive doses of the Pfizer two-dose COVID-19 vaccine sometime this week or next as part of the state’s pilot program to fight the global coronavirus. Tampa General has assembled an internal task force committee of experts to develop the process for vaccine distribution in accordance with Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommendations. The initial shipment of vaccine for this pilot program will be distributed to health care workers battling COVID-19 on the front lines. Guidance by the CDC indicates community access to the vaccine will be available around the Spring of 2021 depending on vaccine production levels.

This vaccine provides hope to our community, and Tampa General is honored to support this pilot program,” said John Couris, president, and CEO of Tampa General Hospital. “We are ready to accept the shipment; we have the personnel, the supplies and the procedures in place to distribute the vaccine. We stand ready to support the Governor and our state officials in whatever capacity is asked of us in the distribution of the vaccine.”

In the initial phase and in accordance with federal guidelines, the COVID-19 vaccine stored at Tampa General will only be available to TGH physicians and staff at greatest risk for exposure to COVID-19 in the workplace. If the vaccine supply received allows for it, once the initial group of TGH workers have begun to receive the vaccination, TGH will supply partner hospitals – AdventHealth, BayCare, Bayfront, HCA and Moffitt – with the vaccine for their first phase group of healthcare workers.

The Pfizer vaccine requires ultra-cold storage (-80 degrees Celsius/-112 degrees Fahrenheit) to maintain maximum effectiveness. Tampa General’s pharmacy currently utilizes three freezers, allowing TGH to safely store a total of 510,000 doses of the vaccine at once. The freezers at TGH also produce dry ice which will be essential for transporting the vaccine safely when needed.

Once the vial is removed from the freezer, the vaccine is stable for five days in the pharmacy refrigerator. To become injectable, it is mixed with a diluent that requires the vaccine to be used within six hours. To maximize this usage, there will be no “on demand” vaccinations – the administering of the vaccines will be scheduled.

Tampa General will not act as a vaccine distribution site to the community in this initial phase as directed by the CDC. To support the needs of the local nursing homes and long-term care facilities, the state has contracted with both CVS and Walgreens to administer vaccinations to those patients as well as the health care workers who provide their direct patient care.

The second phase of vaccinations is expected to begin in early 2021 and, if supply is sufficient, will apply to:

Additional Tampa General physicians or health care workers in direct patient care
Persons over 65 with underlying health conditions
First responders
Law enforcement

Essential workers including teachers, childcare providers, and food distribution employees
As supply increases, vaccinations will become more widely available allowing Tampa General to provide vaccinations to all TGH team members, patients, and other members of the public in accordance with CDC guidelines. Eventually, Tampa General will support 21 locations in the community to serve as general immunization sites. The timeline for this stage of availability is not known at this point but Tampa General is committed to keeping the community informed.

It is expected that the number of COVID-19 cases will continue to rise, potentially to yet unseen levels, in December and into the new year. Although the promise of the vaccine is undeniable, it will take months to vaccinate everyone in the community. Until then, it is critical that we remain vigilant and maintain the safety measures we have adopted since March 2020.

Wear masks
Avoid crowds and practice physical distancing
Practice good hand hygiene