Edinburgh healthcare start-up Novacare rolls out cost-saving software

An Edinburgh-based healthcare technology start-up has pushed the button on its first product having signed up seven customers including the partnership that manages services for the City of Edinburgh Council and NHS Lothian.

Stephen Wilson, chief executive of Novacare. Picture: Contributed

Novacare said its recruitment software was aimed at saving organisations thousands of pounds while slashing the time taken to bring on board new staff.

Other innovations are set to follow this week’s initial product launch, in areas including human resources, wearable tech, robotics, service user health monitoring and a Bluetooth system for the care-at-home market.

The Novacare Recruit software has been developed over four years using the industry knowledge gained by the firm’s chief executive Stephen Wilson, who also founded home care company Social Care Alba. Novacare plans to offer a suite of products that it believes will help to bring the healthcare sector into the digital age.

The recruitment software is due to be launched at the Scottish Care annual Care Home Exhibition and Conference in Glasgow tomorrow. The technology has been shown to reduce recruitment administration time and resources by up to 90 per cent and shrink the average time taken to recruit by as much as 50 per cent, saving resources in a sector that remains under intense financial pressure.

The cloud-based system tracks applications in real time and is accessible round-the-clock from any location. It enables employers to meet legal compliance and data security requirements and has been developed for businesses of all sizes.

Edinburgh Health and Social Care Partnership is in the process of introducing the new system and six other care provider companies on both sides of the Border have signed up ahead of the product launch. Additional care providers are expected to follow suit in the coming weeks.

Wilson said: “We know from our own experience that staff recruitment can be a real headache for the industry, often taking between six and ten weeks at huge expense in terms of administrative time and resources.

“We’ve been able to use our extensive industry knowledge to take a fresh approach and create a user-friendly system that has now been tried and tested and shown to speed up the recruitment process, in one instance to just three days, and make dramatic savings. This means staff can be placed in the business and are productive more quickly and vital resources can instead be spent elsewhere.”

The firm plans an investment drive in 2019 to facilitate its growth. It is recruiting a further 20 staff next year, with an additional 30 earmarked for 2020.