Architecture simulation
Meridian Knowledge Assistant
A care group wants a carer to find the right protocol at three in the morning. The quality manager cannot tell for a third of the documents whether they still apply, and the tablets on the ward are shared.
The engagement
Meridian Care Group delivers district nursing and residential care across eleven locations, with 4,200 staff. Protocols, work instructions and medication guidelines are spread across an intranet, three SharePoint sites and a folder everyone calls "the drive". When a question comes up about a procedure someone rarely performs, a carer usually phones a colleague. The executive board wants an assistant to answer that question, with the source attached.
- Budget
- 400,000 euro over two years, from the quality budget. That budget is less tight than on a commercial engagement, but the accountability for it is stricter.
- Existing platform
- Microsoft 365 E3, Microsoft Entra ID, Microsoft Intune, SharePoint Online, Microsoft Purview, Azure AI Search
What the customer wants to achieve
- Let care staff find the applicable protocol within a minute, showing its version and date.
- Reduce the number of calls to colleagues and the on-call desk, especially on evening and night shifts.
- Be able to demonstrate which protocol was shown to whom at which point in time.
Constraints
- Staff work on shared tablets on the ward; not everyone signs in with their own account.
- The IT department is six people and already runs the electronic patient record, Intune and the workplace.
- The works council has consent rights over tools that can monitor how staff work.
Security requirements
- Patient data from the electronic patient record must under no circumstances end up in an index or prompt.
- The organisation is certified against NEN 7510; the auditor returns in the spring.
- Showing an outdated protocol is not user error but a quality incident that has to be reported.
At the table
Willemien Aalbers
Executive Board Member
“I want a carer at three in the morning to get the right answer. If I have to explain that it cost money, I will.”
Joris ten Cate
Quality and Safety Manager
“If this thing cites a withdrawn protocol, that lands in my incident register and not the vendor's.”
Bilal Ouahabi
IT Team Lead
“There are six of us and we run the patient record system. Whatever gets added, I have to run it with the same people.”
Ellen Grootveld
District Nursing Manager
“My people are wearing gloves. If signing in takes more than ten seconds they will not use it and they will go back to phoning.”
Marloes Dekker
Nurse, evening and night shifts
“I have no time to search. I want to know whether I am allowed to do this and whether this is still the applicable protocol, and then I want to get on with my round.”
Nadia Sterk
Data Protection Officer
“A shared account means that in an incident I cannot establish who saw what. That is not a detail, it is the heart of accountability.”