In the coming decades demographic structure, similar in all European countries, will lead to a smaller workforce responsible for providing social care to the growing number of elderly people. The social care sector is labour-intensive, with the personnel costs by far the most expensive part of any home care unit. An essential part of quality in social care is having enough time for home care workers to carry out their activities with dignity and respect. Laps Care optimizes staff planning in home healthcare. It eliminates the need to plan manually around the needs of individual workers, and the elderly and disabled receive care in their home.

Organizations that have introduced Laps Care into their operations in an efficient way have enjoyed positive effects, economic as well as qualitative, within one year from starting. For example, in proportions visit/working time has increased by 20 percent, short term sick-leave has decreased by up to 70 percent, and the overall cost of home care activities has reduced by 10-15 percent.

In the municipality of Linköping a large number of members of staff provide high quality home care and services round the clock. These members of staff obtain their schedules through Laps Care, which has been in production since 2003. One aim with Laps Care is to make working hours more efficient. A second aim is to ensure high quality in information so that a member with the right competence does the right thing at the right time and in the right place.  Laps Care fulfils our goals and provides good economic results and priceless quality increases in care,” says project manager Marie Almroth from the municipality of Linköping.

The City of Stockholm started with Laps Care in 2003. In 2008 the city is rolling out the system in 1,000 units with 15,000 staff members serving 40,000 clients daily. ”Social care is one of the most important services provided within the City of Stockholm. An essential part of quality in social care is to have enough time for Home Care workers to carry out their activities with dignity and respect. Our new planning program, Laps Care, is a part of solving this,” says project manager Helga Einarsdóttir.

Mats Eklund, who is responsible for resource planning for IT solutions for the elderly and the home care area at Tieto in Sweden, is very satisfied with the success of Laps Care.
”We have now, in an environment of global competition, proven that Laps Care fulfils the market demands on ICT solutions that aim to improve efficiency, quality and finances,” says Eklund.

The nomination in the Franz Edelman Award is not the first award for Laps Care. It has been a finalist in the Users’ Awards contest by TCO/LO, and it has also received the Euro Excellence in Practice Award. The Dagens Medicin medical journal in Sweden selected the Laps Care system as the IT Innovation in Health Care in 2002.

The Franz Edelman Award recognizes outstanding examples of innovative operations research that improves organizations — and often changes people's lives. The annual Franz Edelman Award competition brings together top examples of innovation from large and small, profit and non-profit, corporate and governmental, American and international organizations. Solutions from all over the world were chosen by a jury and reduced to six finalists. The final ceremony took place in Baltimore, U.S. Laps Care ended up losing only to Netherlands Railways together with Erasmus University.

For more information, please contact:
Mats Eklund, Business Manager, TietoEnator, Welfare Sweden, tel. +46 104813061 or + 46709950041, firstname.surname@tieto.com, info.welfare@tieto.com