Healthcare startups are challenging longtime industry practices and assumptions, transforming everything from patient care to organizational efficiencies.
Two entrepreneurs recently participated in the latest healthcare-focused accelerator program at SAP.iO Foundry New York and shared their respective missions to help patients and providers in a vastly changed healthcare landscape.
Real-Time Intelligence Improves Time Management
Applying computer science and systems thinking to improve people’s lives has been a central tenet of Kishau Rogers’ career as an engineer and computer scientist. The COVID-19 pandemic has only amped up the mission behind her newest venture called Time Study. More than 35 hospitals throughout the U.S. rely on the startup’s “time intelligence” cloud-based platform, which uses machine learning to track how physicians, researchers, and other healthcare employees spend their time.
“Instead of just counting hours worked, we wanted to shift the concept of timesheets to a human-centered approach, elevating opportunities to improve people’s lives at work,” Rogers said. “Many of the time management issues we were already looking at, such as data silos and complexity, have only been amplified by the pandemic.”
Time Study has helped hospitals better understand fast-changing workforce movements, whether employees were hunting for scarce personal protective equipment (PPE), jumping into different care-giving roles onsite, or providing new patient services like telehealth. Some hospitals have improved data collection and reporting times by 80 percent and increased regulatory compliance by more than 120 percent.
“Having this platform during the crisis allowed hospitals to see the immediate impact on physician satisfaction levels and performance, as well as employee activities and workflow,” Rogers explained. “Many hospitals are using this data to make resource adjustments as they uncover work performance patterns. With real-time insights, they can better align resources while meeting quality patient care and evolving compliance mandates around patient care standards and reimbursement.”
Rogers was particularly excited about Time Study’s recently launched mobile app. In addition to selecting from time entry categories, healthcare workers can use voice notes to capture tasks in the moment, upload text messages, or time themselves as they perform activities. As the algorithm learns someone’s work patterns, people can spend less time on reporting.
