Oct 15, 2015 | 2 min read

How Gift of Hope Saves More Lives with Procurement Automation

By: Patrick Emmons

How Gift of Hope Saves More Lives with Procurement Automation

Gift of Hope Organ & Tissue Donor NetworkGift of Hope Organ & Tissue Donor Network is a not-for-profit organ procurement organization that coordinates organ and tissue donation and provides public education on donation in Illinois and northwest Indiana.

Find out how DragonSpears automated Gift of Hope’s systems to help them save even more lives, and which obstacles they had to face and overcome to implement these life-saving new processes.

As one of the largest organ procurement organizations in the United States, Gift of Hope fully understood that better connecting the donation coordinators with the hospitals of both the organ donors and recipients – and automating the procurement and needed medical supplies collection process – would literally save thousands more lives.

The issues were the sheer amount of confidential data, the strict timelines, and an unwillingness to sacrifice any service disruption during the development or launch phase. However, the “pen and paper” model could no longer keep up with the need or increasing compliance needs.

DragonSpears mapped out the workflows, then collaborated with the many user bases to uncover technology handshakes that would speed data collection and decrease human error rates. Then we designed wizards and built-in calculations to further streamline the procurement process.

The resulting app, which can be accessed on tablets by the network’s more than one hundred on-site coordinators as well as on laptops and desktops back at the Gift of Hope office, can fully operate in offline mode–important in many medical settings where consistent Wi-Fi is often not available.

Intuitive dashboards and snapshots make it more efficient for Coordinators to work with hospitals and to recover tissues.

Example Workflows

The solution was able to do twice the amount of work in half the time as one developed by a similar organization. Also, when we brought the solution in-house our developers said it was the best code they’ve ever received from an outside organization.

– Anna Gonzalez, VP of Process Improvement & Information Systems

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About Patrick Emmons

If you can’t appreciate a good sports analogy, movie quote, or military reference, you may not want to work with him, but if you value honesty, integrity, and commitment to improvement, Patrick can certainly help take your business or your career to the next level. “Good enough,” is simply not in his vernacular. Pat’s passion is for relentlessly pushing himself and others to achieve full potential. Patrick Emmons is a graduate of St. Norbert College with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and Mathematics. Patrick co-founded Adage Technologies in 2001 and in 2015, founded DragonSpears as a spin-off dedicated to developing custom applications that improve speed, compliance and scalability of clients’ internal and customer-facing workflow processes. When he is not learning about new technology, running a better business, or becoming a stronger leader, he can be found coaching his kids’ (FIVE of them) baseball and lacrosse teams and praising his ever-so-patient wife for all her support.