Press release 19 January, 2011, Emendo Ltd, Christchurch, NZ: Health IT company, Emendo Ltd, has created a new five-person Clinical team to help hospitals meet increasingly challenging operational targets and achieve better patient outcomes with CapPlan. The newly formed Emendo Clinical team will be based in and support hospitals in Australia/New Zealand, United Kingdom, Canada and the United States. The strategic investment follows recent large regional wins in Australia and Canada, and readies the company for an anticipated global surge in demand.
“Around the world health budgets are being slashed, operational targets are becoming more stringent, and the aged-population is increasing. The pressure all this is placing on health care systems has never been more acute,” says Dave Tinkler, CEO of Emendo. “Many hospitals have been implementing lean initiatives to help them meet their health targets and improve clinical decision making. CapPlan complements these initiatives by creating the catalyst for hospitals to re-evaluate and modify traditional and uneconomic practices, and enabling them instead to manage resourcing based on forecasted patient demand.
“There is an increasing need for real-time visibility of available beds, theatre, and staff resources across regional hospitals, and CapPlan has the ability to deliver,” says Dave. “This new team will be the linchpin to ensure hospitals develop best practice system and process design and achieve real clinical results with the software. They are all leaders and specialists in the field of health informatics who are passionate about achieving measurable improvements for hospitals, staff and patients.”
Alan Spinks, former National Programme Manager for Quality, Improvement & Innovation at New Zealand’s Ministry of Health, has been brought in as Clinical Advisor to lead the development of Emendo’s new Clinical unit. He says the difficulty many hospitals have is finding the commitment to look holistically at the patient journey and challenge traditional processes while they’re operating day to day in crisis mode.
“Emendo recognises the many challenges hospitals face from bottlenecks to health cuts, and has designed CapPlan to help them to better manage their resources and keep on top of demand,” says Alan. “Our role in the Clinical team is to look after hospitals through the implementation and change process and help them realise how they can achieve optimal operational efficiencies and deliver the required results within their health targets.”
The other four Clinical staff recruited to join the team are:
The announcement raises the total Emendo staff count to 47.
Emendo’s CapPlan solution is today enabling over 40 hospitals throughout New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the UK to forecast patient demand and plan resourcing accordingly. All of them, including Bedford Hospital Trust in the UK, are reporting significant savings and efficiencies since implementing CapPlan, usually in the region of hundred of thousands or millions of dollars per year. In 2009, the CapPlan implementation at Bedford was named winner of the ''Adopt, Adapt and Improve" category of the national Health and Social Care Awards.
Emendo also recently cemented its foothold in Canada by establishing the Emendo Health office in Vancouver, run by Canadian Business Development Manager Robin Abrey. Six hospitals in the Vancouver region are using CapPlan.
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For more information or an interview please contact:
Shannon Thoma / Shelley Grell, PR for Emendo
Communicate IT Ltd
shannon@communicateit.co.nz
03 381 6656, or 021 747 355
Meet the Emendo Clinical Team
Alan Spinks, Clinical Advisor
Alan Spinks joined Emendo in August 2010 as a clinical consultant, having recently spent two years working with the New Zealand Ministry of Health as the National Programme Manager for Quality, Improvement & Innovation.
He has extensive experience in health service transformation, having completed the acclaimed "Osprey" Programme in 2004. Alan has a nursing background, working in the NHS for 20 years where he developed a passion for service transformation in healthcare. Prior to immigrating with his family to New Zealand in 2007, Alan worked for the Department of Health, UK as a Workforce Designer and was instrumental in a number of national programmes that increased quality of care for patients and at the same time developing career pathways for healthcare professionals.
Alan then worked with the NHS South West Strategic Health Authority as a Clinical System Engineer, working on health service transformation programmes focused on innovative ways of working and information systems support.
Leigh Singers, Clinical Consultant, New Zealand
Leigh joins Emendo from Waikato Hospital where she served most recently as Nurse Manager Operations and oversaw the pilot and implementation of CapPlan and the development of a capacity and bed plan which reflected facility and nursing resource requirements to meet demand. Prior to the appointment as Nurse Manager Operations, she worked for the hospital for over 10 years in a variety of operational management roles and was responsible for patient flow and inpatient wards.
Previously Mrs Singers worked as a nurse in Auckland and the UK, and was trained as a registered comprehensive nurse at Waikato Polytechnic.
Brian Dolan, Clinical Consultant, UK
Brian is a specialist in patient flow, clinical engagement, lean thinking and systems redesign. He has worked with the Canterbury District Health Board as Director of Service Improvement and Patient Flow and served as a Member of the Health Roundtable Faculty in Australia as an independent consultant providing developmental events for executive and clinical leaders.
Brian has been commissioned by the UK Department of Health to undertake reviews and implement improvements to patient flow, workforce modernisation, clinical governance, minor injuries services and bed management systems. He has advised agencies around the world on emergency department overcrowding and patient flow systems.
Previously Brian was the Executive Director of Modernisation and Service Improvement at a large NHS Trust where he was also Clinical Director of the Emergency Department. Brian has a background in clinical nursing and was a Research Fellow at King’s College. He has authored several books and papers on emergency nursing and nursing education.
Zena Lind, Clinical Consultant, Canada
Zena is a registered nurse who has also worked in several management positions in businesses in and out of healthcare. Prior to joining the Emendo Canada office as Clinical Consultant Zena was the ICU Care Management Leader at Vancouver General Hospital, where she was responsible for assessing the care requirements of the patients in the ICU and improving patient flow.
Zena is one of the key organisers of the Canadian Critical Care Conference held each year in Whistler, which addresses the challenge of providing appropriate care for the critically ill patient in the most effective and efficient manner possible.
Arthur Lambert, Chief of Clinical Systems - US
Arthur Lambert is a senior Healthcare Executive with experience in the development and implementation of healthcare leadership and patient care management systems and strategies. He has assisted many hospitals and hospital systems with the development and implementation of patient care strategies and systems to address and achieve superior performance in the complex healthcare environment. Arthur was introduced to Emendo by New Zealand Trade & Enterprise during the Focus on Health challenge earlier this year.
Arthur has also played a significant leadership role in several large initiatives focused on achieving significant impact to healthcare. He was a primary contributor to Workforce Strategy integral to SSM Healthcare’s Patient Focused Care / Functional Clinical Integration initiative leading to the first healthcare system to attain Baldrige recognition for quality. He was a core project leader/partner for Buckeye Corporation in the India Medical City project that brought Johns Hopkins, Duke, Stanford, UCSF, and Oxford into an alliance to build a 1000 bed post graduate university healthcare community in Bangalore, India. He developed and executed a multi-hospital nurse staffing system initiative for VHA Great Rivers, Springfield, IL.