In recent years, there has been a significant development of services and products from the MedTech industry. The digitization of services allows for a better use of resources (funds, care, medicines) and people (shortening the travel time, fewer documents). Thanks to this we can focus on the effective way to improve caring for the elderly. Digital transformation gives a start to many tools and resources which improve providing such services.
In this blog post, we present our experience of working on the application, which we developed in cooperation with the Social Services Center in Warsaw and implemented in July 2021. This is a system that enables management, planning and verification of hot meals delivery by the administrative unit for people in need.
Reporting and deliveries analysis – problem description
Systematic hot meals delivery for elderly or impaired people can constitute a significant logistical and organizational problems for social case services. Usually hot meals are delivered in lunch time, for instance between 11am to 3pm and the food is delivered to the specific premises where a given person lives. Meals are often not received due to a person’s departure or health problems. The social services center usually employs catering companies to prepare and deliver meals. They must have confirmation that the food has been delivered to the resident on schedule. Without a proper system, controlling meal deliveries can be problematic.
In care services it is important to create constantly updated lists of people to whom hot meals are delivered. More over, the it must be taken into account that certain decisions determine whether a particular person is entitled to a meal on a given day. For some people, meals are delivered daily, for others on weekdays, and for others only on weekends. This makes the daily preparation of an updated deliver list time-consuming, and the activity itself is repetitive and error-prone.
Overlapping organizational and billing problems in care services that supports a large number of residents everyday, makes the process not completely successful. Digitalization improves organizational and logistics processes. Thanks to this, people who need help actually receive it.
Benefits of digitalization in social care services
Digital transformation improves the whole process associated with the cooperation of entities. On the one hand, we have a town hall that orders the execution of meals, and on the other hand, catering companies and suppliers who prepare and deliver meals. At the end of this process, we have people who need help.
Our application automatically generates meal delivery lists for each day based on the entered and existing administrative decisions. Thanks to this, we can be sure that every person that needs help will receive their meal.
Digitalization allows for ongoing verification that hot meals are properly delivered. For this we can use QR codes. Stickers with such codes are placed next to each apartment. Suppliers can scan them and confirm that on schedule, they arrived at the location and delivered the meal.
Using mobile app you can inform town hall that a specific person has not turned up at his/her place of residence. Proper system allows you to automatic generation of reports and settlements for catering companies. Information about delivery times or delivered meals are contain in the server part of the system, to which town hall employees have access. Thanks to this, they can better control spending money from public funds.
IT technologies ensure that people in need of help receive their hot meal on time without any delay. Using mobile apps employees of catering companies and town hall have access to up-to-date data. CUS Warsaw uses such solutions to deliver meals for elderly.
Digitalization of social meal delivery for elderly and impaired people
We created a system which consists of a mobile application and a server part. It allows to management, planning and verification meals delivery to people who need help. This project supports social policy through which people who need care can receive it. In every large city there is a center dedicated to this, which deals with care services. For example, in Warsaw it’s Social Service Center “Social Warsaw”, and in Gdansk its Municipal Family Support Center.
The main assumptions of a project
The main task in this project is the automation of supply chain management using digital technologies and reporting. System enables creating of updated delivery plans for each day. It automatically generates daily and monthly reports. The system can handle up to 2 thousand orders a day. Technologies that are used in this project enable automatic management of people covered by delivery, catering companies and drivers in the system. It processes personal data, but it’s compliant with ISO 27001 standards.
Thanks to this, all data is safe. Only the required data is processed, so it is not distributed to the outside world. So, this project meets all GDPR requirements. Our system ensure insight into the current implementation of delivery processes and informing about the unavailability of a resident. It provides up-to-date information on meal distribution, i.e. the type of diet, transporting times and residents comments.
Advantages of implementing the system
Implementation of this project makes the entire delivery process transparent. It can shorten the time of administrative and logistic services using technological tools. If the process is more transparent, the users of local government administration have better insight into how public money is used for social assistance. Thanks to this system, obtaining reports and summaries is much more convenient and less time-consuming. The entire process of spending public funds is transparent to all parties.It integrates systems that already exist in CUS Warsaw. Therefore, importing various types of data from existing IT systems is much easier.
Improving social care services
The use of IT technology in the care services makes the entire process their provision much more transparent and, above all, optimized in organizational, formal and financial terms. Thanks to this, both town hall employees and catering companies are gaining on time. This is a significant factor when delivering hot meals to people who need help. Our system is a cloud-based system, but it can also be implemented as an on-demand system. So, it can be used in the infrastructure of the office or in dedicated servers.
The implementation of such a system is not a complicated process. You have to take care of:
- Integration with the already existing systems or with other systems for decision about delivering meals,
- Delivering QR codes to residents,
- Installation of the application by drivers.
As a company, we offer effective solutions that facilitate the effective management of logistic and organizational processes. We help in monitoring and reporting activities in the supply chain.
Inero Software provides knowledge and expertise on how to successfully use cutting edge technologies and data to shape corporate digital products of the future.
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