NI doctors could save NHS time and money with pioneering new app

Rotapal aims to modernise rota systems

Author: Tara MclaughlinPublished 30th Mar 2019
Last updated 30th Mar 2019

Northern Ireland's hospitals could save on locum bills with a pioneering new app.

Two local surgeons came up with the idea after facing challenges with current rota systems.

Rotapal- a cloud based rota communication system aims to tackle problems by providing instant access to hospital rotas.

Harry Eves is the CEO:

"We want to get away from the fact that rotas are based on a spreadsheet and stuck to ward walls and move it into the digital era of using apps.

"The NHS system in terms of rota management is quite outdated.

"Rotas are designed on Excel spreadsheets and then forwarded by email," he said.

He added: "Doctors and their colleagues would be accessing these rotas by email and then any changes that are made within these have to be redistributed."

Long waiting lists, staff shortages and shrinking budgets mean the NHS needs to be more efficient than ever.

It is thought around two hours per day are wasted by medical staff updating clinical rosters.

The team behind Rotapal hope to help alleviate some of those pressures:

"We talk about time efficiencies, it's well documented the pressures that both clinicians and administration staff within the NHS are under," Harry said.

"When we talk about switchboard, it's the same switchboard that you and I would be ringing through that the doctors would be using.

"By making sure that those lines are as clear as possible and reducing the amount of time that they have to spend off the lines...that obviously increases proficiency within the system."

The health service in Northern Ireland spends millions of pounds every year plugging gaps in staff through locum doctors.

Harry told Downtown Cool FM, this could be reduced by more efficient day-to-day running of services:

"We want to improve the system by having a more accountable platform.

"We want to flag any locum gaps that would be in each rota early, that way administrators can avail of better rates by going out to any locum agencies and fulfilling these either through agency staff or better still, through internal staff."

The app is currently being used in the Ulster Hospital in the South Eastern Trust.

It is hoped that after the successful pilot, it can be applied in other trusts and become more widely used by health staff in Northern Ireland and beyond.

Harry told us he has high hopes for Rotapal:

"We talk about the likes of the Ulster Hospital where there's over 90 clinical rotas working on a daily basis.

"You can imagine the amount of administration it requires to run those rotas, that's with over 600 doctors.

"We're currently trialing with the South-Eastern Trust within four specialties, the idea is that once we validate our product within the trust environment, that we would roll it out further with the South Eastern Trust but also increase trust numbers throughout Northern Ireland," he said.

He added: "We really want to scale-up our operations working with trusts further afield both throughout the rest of the UK, as well as the rest of Ireland and even further afield again."

You can see more about Rotapal here