An app to set nurses free from roster work

Hospitalised, a patient buzzes the alarm, but the nurse is caught up in a complicated rostering process that requires micro focus on duty charts and schedules. So, why not automate the entire process, freeing up the nurse incharge? This is precisely what Google’s Cloud app, Duty Rota is doing.

Integrating information technology with healthcare, Google Cloud has tied up with many government and large private hospitals. In Bengaluru, a tie-up with Manipal Health Enterprises had a clear objective: To reduce the stress on nurses, both those in charge of the rosters and subject to the rosters.

So, how did this work? Google explained: “Night shifts were more equitably distributed among the nurses, while they’ve been able to reduce the 45 minutes per day required to amend rosters to just 10 minutes. In Bengaluru alone, there were 51 nurses in charge of rostering — so the combined saving there equates to nearly 30 hours per day.”

This way, senior nurses are freed up to complete more important tasks, including caring for patients.

“Google Cloud’s Compute Engine helped Manipal to develop and run an application over Google’s infrastructure to automate the rostering process for nursing staff taking into account the equitable distribution of shifts, leaves, training and more.”

The National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) has estimated the Indian healthcare IT market to be about $1 billion in 2014. This is projected to grow around 1.5 times by 2020.

Beyond healthcare, Google talks about its Cloud platform’s role in the telecommunications, media and entertainment arena, where companies, including traditional broadcasters, digital native OTT companies, game studios and news publishers are empowered to connect their global customer base with personalised content.

The Manipal Group subsequently implemented the solution at Kasturba Hospital, Manipal.

It said the project helped reduce the time needed to generate complete nursing rosters to less than
10 minutes.