technology
features we wanted in the software. With Lloyd and now with the
help of Paul Fisher, as well, who’s our technical expert, we’ve put it
all together. We’ve all worked as a team to get it going.
Has it been hard to convince people to move to a digital platform?
Surprisingly, no. I work in a hospital, and the demographic is a little
bit older, and we did have one or two staff members that were a
bit resistant.
Since then, they’ve done a complete 180 switch. I’ve actually
had somebody call me and say: “This is really great, Beth. I’m sorry.
Everything’s working perfectly.”
How wide has your rollout been?
At the moment, we’re fully deployed at Maitland Private Hospital.
We’re talking to some large hospital groups at the moment, and on
the verge of getting sign-off to one of the major hospital groups.
Once we get that official sign-off, it should be, hopefully, within
the next week or so, we’ll have another pilot up and going. We
have plans to roll out Australia-wide.
Are you constantly working on the software to improve it and
add features?
Yes, I have plans to integrate with hospital systems and provide
education for nurses as well. As they’re picking up an item, they
can learn about the instrument and how it’s used.
We do have the capability to do that now. You can write
anything you want next to the item and people can learn. As
they’re doing setups, they’re learning about all the instruments and
which surgeons use it and in what function the instrument is used.
I’d like to go further. I’d like to integrate videos and make it a full
education platform.
Is it scalable? You’re talking about hospitals, but what about
smaller day surgeries?
It’s fully scalable. I’ve never worked in a day surgery, but I’ve spoken
with day surgery staff who’ve told me that they want this for their area
of work, as well as anaesthetics. The next hospital that we’re piloting
at would like to get the anaesthet ic preference cards on board as
well, because they’ve had the same problems that they’d like fixed.
You recently picked up the 2017 Healthe Care Australia HESTA
Innovation Award. How did you come to be nominated and
what does it mean to you to win the award?
I was nominated by my nursing unit manager over at Maitland. We
got told we’d been nominated. We made the final list and attended
the night, which was funnily enough in Merewether, which is
close to home. It was a national award, so that was pretty handy.
We were up against some really great innovations throughout
the Healthe Care hospital chain – amazing ideas and things that
people are doing all over Australia. To win that was such a great
privilege. I just walked out feeling so inspired.
I had the chief executive of Maitland Private jumping up and
down and giving me cuddles as I walked up. It just pushed me.
It drove me to push harder and faster and just get it out there,
because I know that it is a problem that we’re solving.
Are you still working as a nurse, or is Scrubit taking up all
your time?
I am technically still employed as a scrub nurse, but I have devoted
myself to this project full-time. I haven’t worked as a nurse in
about four months now. I’ve just been working on Scrubit.
Photo: Scrubit
Do you think that you’ll ever go back to nursing full-time, or are
you more into being a startup entrepreneur?
I think this is the life for me now. I’d love to just work on Scrubit
full-time. I love the startup life. I love being a female entrepreneur
and learning about business and just getting out there and learning
all the ins and outs. It’s a new world. It’s completely different to
nursing, but it’s definitely something that I’ve loved doing. I’ve
loved every minute of it.
If there are any nurses reading this that think they have an idea
to improve practices, what advice would you give them?
You’ve really got to work out if it is something. It might be a
problem to you, but you’ve got to work out if it’s a problem to
everybody. If this is something that others are noticing and they
can see that it is a problem that needs solving, go out and talk
to people. Get some advice. Get some feedback. Work out if it’s
something that your idea is going to solve, and if it is, test it, iterate.
Just constantly evolve, but start small.
That’s the other thing. You start at the minimally viable product
and you work up from there. Don’t go grand and work your way
back, because you’ll find if you make something too big and it
doesn’t work, it’s a lot of backtracking. If you start small and test,
that’s the best way to go forward.
Is there anything you would like to add?
I just want people to know that we’ve got a problem that we’ve
seen needs fixing. We’ve spoken to people all over Australia. I
actually spoke to a surgeon from Alice Springs recently who’s now
retired, but he said when he was working, even up to last year, he
had this problem. He said: “Just get it out there.” So, if anybody
would like to have a chat, just look us up on www.scrubit.com.au,
and we’d be happy to give you a call. ■
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