The coronavirus pandemic is causing surges in healthcare delivery in every corner of the world, and there are signs that these changes will ultimately benefit long-term healthcare businesses, according to a recent survey and white paper released by Research2Guidance. Yet how did it affect our client, Genesis Automation Healthcare, and how did they manage to get through the past weeks?
How has the COVID-19 context impacted the domain you work in, of providing software for the healthcare industry?
The main use cases of Genesis’ applications are ordering products and enabling interactions with patients, both of which have had an uptake in use in the last couple of weeks. In the recent rise of demand and use, we are closely monitoring integrations with 3rd party systems to ensure orders go through – orders of PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) are of course very important, and a high priority in this time frame. We are also enabling a better overview of hospital care by implementing changes to our Point of Care module that will allow for contact tracing options for staff and patients.
What do you consider that are the biggest accomplishments of Genesis Automation Healthcare, in the past weeks, in the context of pandemics?
In a nutshell, business continuity and productivity. We realized from the start that flexibility was key in managing to continue a steady inflow of product work, while accommodating the necessary changes for the staff, considering that work from home (although beneficial for some) brings new challenges that were not there before – taking care of family members, dealing with internet issues or even logistics. We expected and took as a possibility a dip in productivity due to the “new normal”, but it has been the opposite. The teams are focused and delivering on schedule. You have to remember, in the new context our deadlines haven’t gone away. On the contrary, the recent demand raised a new need that was perfectly handled by well-organized and capable teams.
What changes did the Genesis team perform immediately after working in an office was no longer possible?
Logistics was key, and Genesis was prepared for remote working initiatives for quite some time. All team members have encrypted laptops instead of Desktops, and all our infrastructure is cloud-based. From a team perspective, we set up coffee morning video calls a couple of times a week and in general, we’ve increased our face-to-face communication where possible. This has created a new setting of personal closeness that might not have been there before the pandemics, and meetings have become shorter and more productive, with faster decisions and results.
How was the interaction with the Maxcode distributed team and how did you manage to make the new context a productive one?
Having an already established distributed team in Maxcode was definitely beneficial. Their setup in the ‘work from home’ setting was flawless and were able to work as normal without having to implement any major changes. Productivity is great – if anything, it has even gone up. More so, with everyone being included in the same online meetings and context, it has joined the teams together into a single force, with a unitary goal.
What are the main learning points so far from this experience and context, both as a business and from working with a distributed team?
The main thing we realized, as a business, is that we want to enable our staff, to provide everything they need to continue their progress regardless of the context, and anything we can do around that has been made a priority. The fact that we already had a plan and logistics into place helped us adapt quickly to all the changes, without being forced to slow down or stop. As next stages, we are considering and reviewing an investment in tools – both digital and equipment, to support our priority, yet we are extremely proud of the amazing results we showed in the past weeks, as well as in the resilience of our teams in making things work, despite difficulties.
