Teaser for new features

We have mentioned before some of the new features that will be available when we launch our rebuilt healthcare roster software later this year. They are all pretty exciting, especially for the people in the team like this author who gets to play with them without having to write the software code!Some of the features we are particularly excited about are the ability to more easily manage larger installations with more rosters and more users. The tools and features that allow this will also be really useful for smaller installations.Examples of this are:

• A new data structure called 'teams'. These will be optional and completely user-configurable. It will allow rosters and shifts to have default team requirements, a bit like the 'skills' feature we already have. Unlike skills, teams will be hierarchical, so that someone who is in the 'endocrinology' could automatically be considered part of the 'physicians' team, which in turn could be considered part of the 'medical staff' team. Our physician customers will rejoice!
• Significantly easier permission management. Even our business leaders acknowledge that managing permissions in HosPortal can require some attention...mostly because it is so flexible and customisable. We have changed this to assume some more default permissions, but still maintained the flexibility for power users.
• Multi-point-and-click template building. This will massively reduce the labour involve in setting up templates, and will allow templates to be built in logical blocks: you could first define all your cadiac surgery sessions across the month with a single process, then populate the surgeons and anaesthetists in blocks.
• New concept of 'roster groups'. Currently we have two scheduling pages, one for clinical allocations ('Allocations') and another for on-call rosters or shifts ('Call'). The new roster groups will allow any number of separate roster pages (e.g. some that apply to anaesthetists separate from the ones that apply to physicians), and can comprise any combination of location-based rosters (like our current Allocations) and activity-based roster (like our current Call).

We know that some of our customers will love these enhancements and we look forward to showing them off soon.