Massachusetts General Hospital Selects Aurora Software to Schedule Medical Residents

Artificial Intelligence Software Will Help Hospital Manage Medical Staff More Effectively

SAN MATEO, CA, October 19, 2010 — Stottler Henke Associates, Inc. today announced that Massachusetts General Hospital will use its Aurora software to schedule clinical rotations, on-call shifts, and clinic hours for its medical residency program. The Aurora software solution will reduce the time and effort needed to generate efficient schedules that support the hospital’s complex staffing needs and comply with complex and changing rules and constraints.

As the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, Mass General offers residency programs in more than a dozen clinical departments and interdisciplinary areas. Initially, Aurora will support the hospital’s Internal Medicine residency program. Scheduling these residents is complex and labor-intensive because the schedules must satisfy the hospital’s staffing requirements, special requests, and clinical rotation rules that ensure that residents receive appropriate experiences.

The scheduling process has three phases. First, a rotation schedule is generated that assigns residents to rotation assignments based on their track and year of residency. Next, call schedules are produced that ensure that each rotation has appropriate residents on call at all times without over-burdening any residents. Finally, clinic schedules are generated that satisfy the rotation rules and requirements while avoiding conflicts with each resident’s call schedule.

Currently, it takes highly skilled schedulers an enormous amount of time to generate a high- quality, equitable schedule that complies with all of the rules. Aurora will streamline the three- phase scheduling process by producing clinical rotation schedules, call schedules, and conflict- free clinic schedules. This automation will enable the hospital to reschedule their residents quickly and efficiently while satisfying staffing requirements, constraints, and guidelines. Aurora’s flexible intelligence will allow them to accurately model and revise their numerous constraints as staffing rules change from year to year.

“We are delighted that Massachusetts General Hospital has selected Aurora software to streamline their resident scheduling process,“ said Dick Stottler, president of Stottler Henke. “Aurora’s artificial intelligence scheduling technology will help Massachusetts General allocate its personnel more effectively to provide the highest quality medical care and medical education.”

Aurora is a sophisticated scheduling system that combines a variety of scheduling techniques, intelligent scheduling conflict resolution, and decision support to generate highly efficient solutions to complex problems. The software’s customizable scheduling algorithms take into account resource requirements, complex constraints, and pertinent domain knowledge. Aurora’s built-in capabilities and extensibility enable it to significantly outperform other scheduling systems that use generic heuristics to assign resources to tasks. The Boeing Company uses Aurora to manage the process of building the Boeing 787 Dreamliner™ commercial airliner, and NASA uses Aurora at Kennedy Space Center to schedule International Space Station payload and Shuttle processing activities. The United Space Alliance (USA) incorporated Aurora into Temporis, designed to schedule flight activities on board NASA’s next- generation manned spacecraft. Aurora was featured in NASA’s Hallmarks of Success video series that showcases successful spin-off technologies.

Founded in 1988, Stottler Henke Associates, Inc. applies artificial intelligence and other advanced software technologies to solve problems that defy solution using traditional approaches. The company delivers intelligent software solutions for education and training, planning and scheduling, knowledge management and discovery, decision support, and software development. In 2006, Stottler Henke was the subject of a NASA “Hallmarks of Success” video profile for its work developing and later commercializing advanced planning and training software systems. Stottler Henke received a 2004 “Brandon Hall Excellence in Learning” award for innovative technology. Stottler Henke was named one of the “top 100” companies making a significant impact on the military training industry by Military Training Technology magazine for 2009 and five previous years. In 2005, Stottler Henke received a Blue Ribbon, recognizing it as a company that leads the industry in innovation. Web: http://www.stottlerhenkein.com.