Automated roster-filling
HosPortal has been talking for some time to a major hospital group that wants to use HosPortal to create rosters after collating doctors' preferences. More about the details of that in later blog posts...we expect it will be live in a week or so once we have finished our rigorous testing.A part of that solution is something completely different to our normal approach, which has traditionally provided simple tools to allow administrators to build and manage rosters. Or allow doctors to pick their own shifts.
Automatically build rosters
For the first time we will have a system that can automatically generate a roster, based on:
- User preferences
- Priorities that the roster administrator can apply to each user (who gets first pick?)
- Roster-building rules, e.g. overworking rules and rules regarding separation between shifts.
This has involved us doing some research on best practice roster-filling, and brushing off our mathematical modelling skills. In future blogs we look forward to explaining some of the fascinating findings.Overall we think our new approach to roster building will be like comparing our current software to the one in the picture... 
(Image: an analogue computer from WW2; U.S. Government archive)
