CliniShift is a niche medtech company that is transforming staff scheduling for healthcare providers in Ireland, the US and the UK.
Aimee Madden is a former CEO at the Whitfield Private Hospital in Waterford, where she saw the challenge of filling vacant shifts.
The gaps in the roster highlighted a gap in the market, and Ms Madden founded CliniShift in 2015.
"CliniShift automates what is currently a manual process across over 90% of hospitals globally today, involving clunky steps that managers must go through in order to fill last minute shifts for nurses and doctors," she explained. "Ultimately our technology is striving to reduce that over-reliance on agencies who are very expensive."
She said the HSE spends €1 million a day on agency staff, and CliniShift is trying to save healthcare facilities time and money by streamlining staff scheduling. The cloud-based platform matches up the shifts with the appropriate skill sets of nurses and doctors, and it takes account of continuity of care. "Having the same nurse or doctor with a patient increases quality of care," the CliniShift CEO said.
"I think it's very important not to put in freelance, locum and agency nurses onto a ward where they are not familiar with patients and processes."
The Irish market has been quite slow to pick up the product. Ms Madden puts that down to budgetary constraints. CliniShift has had good traction internationally, with a lot of interest with post acute care in the US. She plans to open two new offices in the US, one being in St Louis where she will serve three of the largest health systems in the Mid West.
While CliniShift is currently used to fill vacant shifts in healthcare, it is applicable across many sectors. "Absolutely, because it is automating manual processes with shifts, and it's also a very robust communication tool."
Ms Madden received consultancy advice and financial supports from her local enterprise office in Dublin, and she credits a grant she got from LEO for allowing her to grow the business by employing more staff and driving the company's international agenda.
"Enterprise Ireland were also hugely supportive. I was part of the new frontiers programme in 2017 which tightened up our business model and asked some very tough questions, which was great."
