(1194-C) A customizable electronic solution to automate work orders, staffing assignment, and status tracking

Abstract: Mayo Clinic Rochester’s Automation and Liquid Handling Team develops and evaluates automated workflows for over 30 laboratories across the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology. This team’s staff has three different foci including liquid handling programming, systems engineering consultation, and evaluation of “new-to-Mayo” automation solutions. Liquid handling and systems engineering projects are performed first-in-first-out (FIFO). Innovation evaluation projects are received via request for application (RFA), scored, ranked, and awarded based on staff capacity and available space in the Process Innovation Through Automation laboratory. To manage this work and to provide a single landing page for all requestors, a single REDCap survey is used to collect project requirements. Branching logic divides FIFO and RFA work into two different channels and reduces the total number of questions the requestor needs to answer by dynamically changing the next question based on previous responses. Following survey completion, an Email is automatically sent to the requestor as well as to the operational staff with a link back to the request so status can be tracked. FIFO projects are reviewed by operational staff and self-assigned based on specialities. RFA projects are automatically sent to a review team consisting of higher leadership where they are scored on metrics to determine impact and cost. Once started, both FIFO and RFA work is tracked through a series of stage gates including feasibility, ideation, development, and validation. For overall project tracking, all projects can be visualized at once in a record status dashboard where color coded fields show which stage a project is at and whether the status is active or has a risk/roadblock. At the individual project level, notes can be entered at each stage to further detail activity. Filters can be applied to the dashboard to select for projects based on status or type. This allows each team member to review their assignments and for leadership to review for productivity or roadblocks. To date, an operational team of five people has used this tool in support of over 180 projects of all sizes in under three years.