Scheduling and Notification Solution

The Vendor is required to provide scheduling and notification paging system that has become increasingly inefficient, lacking modern capabilities such as integration with clinical workflows, real-time updates, and secure messaging.
- Future and desired state
• Ability for integration with pager and mobile notification systems
• Web based, iOS and android platforms.
• Scheduling capability
• VoIP phone system integration
• User friendly interface
• Reliability, security and compliance
• Scalability
• Training and support
- Key features of solution
• A calendar function capable of inputting on-call duty schedules, managing 64 separate calendars sorted alphabetically by department for at least 2000 individuals.
• A duty list feature generating succinct, self-updating list indicating current on-call personnel for each department.
• Individual profiles within the duty list enabling users to initiate calls, pages, or SMS messages.
• This includes the ability to make calls, send pages via the SNPP protocol, and dispatch SMS messages.
• Support for at least 200 administrative accounts with calendar update permissions.
• The ability to generate daily backups of calendars in pdf, excel format for network outage contingencies.
• A read-only calendar version accessible organization wide.
• Compatible with SMS and mms (mobile devices).
• Mobile access – allow staff to work on a device of their choice.
• Shift trades – allows staff to trade shifts.
• Secure messaging – secure messaging for staff communication.
• Real-time updates to schedules for all hospital staff.
- Functional requirements
1. Communication features:
• Group messaging: ability to send messages to predefined groups (e.g., doctors, nursing staff, clinic x).
• Paging: must include the ability to page individuals or teams instantly.
• SMS paging: ability to send SMS messages to individuals or teams instantly.
• Multi channel notifications: support simultaneous or sequential delivery via pager, mobile app push, SMS, voice call, and email.
• Escalation rules: automatic escalation if a message is not acknowledged within a defined timeframe (for example, re page, SMS, call supervisor).
• Redundancy and fallback: automatic fallback to alternate channels if the primary delivery method fails.
• Acknowledgement and read receipts: ability to confirm message delivery and recipient acknowledgement.
• Priority and severity levels: ability to tag messages as urgent, critical, or informational, with corresponding alert behavior.
• Do not disturb rules: option to set quiet hours with overrides for critical alerts.
• Templates and standard messages: option to predefined message templates for common scenarios (codes, coverage requests, emergencies).
2. User management and roles:
• Role-based access control: different permissions based on roles (e.g., admin, nurse, doctor).
• User authentication: secure login with integration with existing hospital MS single sign on.
• User provisioning and DE provisioning: automated creation, updating, and removal of user accounts through integration with Microsoft Entra, driven by workday or identity lifecycle events to ensure timely access and access removal.
3. Integration requirements:
• Phone system integration: the app must support integration with the existing telephony system (Cisco UCCX VoIP) for direct calling or paging.
• Click to call and click to page: ability to initiate calls or pages directly from schedules, user profiles, or incidents within the app.
• Staff directory integration: sync staff profiles, contact methods, roles, and availability from the enterprise directory.
4. Search and directory:
• Staff directory: the system should include an up-to-date directory of all hospital staff with contact details.
• Search functionality: users should be able to search all fields such as name, title, department, location, contact details, and manager; requires flexible behavior like partial matches, case insensitivity, typo tolerance, and multi-term searches across fields; include filters to refine results; and state expectations for relevance ranking, performance, usability, and accessibility.
5. Scalability and performance:
• Support for multiple users: the app should be capable of handling large-scale deployments, as it will need to serve all hospital staff simultaneously without performance degradation.
• Load balancing: ability to manage traffic and data load during high-traffic periods (e.g., shift changes).
• Low latency notifications: defined performance targets for message delivery, paging, and voice call initiation, even during peak load.
• Real time performance monitoring: visibility into system health, message latency, queue depth, and error rates.
• Performance SLAs: contractual guarantees around uptime, delivery times, and system responsiveness.