‘The Evolution of Rostering’: Allocate’s Annual User Group Conference

With an ever-growing demand on aged care organisations and health services across Australia, its workforce is already stretched. Healthcare managers work hard to get best out of their available workforce and fundamentally they are now more reliant than ever on technology innovation to ensure they are allocating the right people in the right place and at the right time. It was no surprise therefore that over 100 healthcare professionals from Public, Private Acute and the Aged Care sector gathered at Melbourne Convention Centre last week for the annual Allocate User Group Conference. The event themed ‘the Evolution of Rostering’ focused on the developments to Allocate’s flagship rostering platform, Optima and its migration to the cloud.

Now in its 5th year, the APAC User Group Conference grows in popularity each year with this year’s event securing the highest number of attendees to date. With customers from hospitals and aged care organisations across all states, travelling as far Perth, attendees shared their experiences on workforce management and learned about how the new product introductions will help improve workforce management and reporting across their organisations.

Matt Durston, Managing Director, APAC welcomed guests from across the region representing a total of 90 companies responsible for more than 250,000 staff rostered across APAC. Opening the event, he said “as a software company committed to helping people deliver the best healthcare, today we’re incredibly excited to be looking ahead and sharing some of the positive changes with our Optima platform. As well as developing new apps that will incorporate notifications with a strong focus on retention and engagement in the workforce, next year a full tablet based version of Optima is being released. This will be browser independent and enable a mobile workforce with every single piece of functionality available from a tablet.”

Delivering the packed agenda to attendees with the latest product presentations, breakout groups and a panel session, Allocate’s product management team outlined the Optima road map. Giving an overview of its new functionality, they highlighted how improvements will assist with the management of acuity and focus on safe staffing as well as staff engagement. Each year Allocate welcomes new partners to its User Group and this year was no exception.

As well as the networking opportunity for the assembled healthcare community, there was also a big focus on the journey to smoothly transition customers across to Optima. The new SaaS enabled version of Optima will see the development of apps that will incorporate notifications with a strong focus on retention and engagement in the workforce.

The feedback

Kirsty Sharp, Payroll Manager, Goulburn Valley Health welcomed the enhancements to the Optima platform; “We’re really encouraged by the Optima product updates and it’s exciting that hospitals throughout Victoria will benefit from the enhancements which will have a big impact on our organisation.”

Elizabeth Petrou, Change Manager, Northern Health was encouraged by the planned improvements to the technology; “I think the technology has come a long way and the dashboard reporting and real time information and the availability of information for our end users is hugely beneficial.”

Matt Durston concluded “With our customers at forefront of everything we do, it is critical that our solutions support the pressing issues and challenges facing the healthcare industry. A live view of the hospital or residence with the ability to redeploy staff across areas based on the patient’s acuity it’s just an example of the innovation and software enhancements that Optima offer. It is all about the technology to care for an evolving mobile workforce with more effective rostering.”