Castellan Systems

On the 17th April 2020 Jose Luis Elvira Muñoz, a cousin of our Managing Director, passed away from COVID-19. Jose was a healthcare worker at a hospital in Alcazar de San Juan, a town south of Madrid in Spain. He was working in the Emergency department with little personal protection equipment (PPE) provided; he had only been diagnosed with COVID-19 11 days earlier.

While this event was hard on the whole family, it was even harder for his children, grandchildren and brothers as they were not able to see him and say goodbye as they did not live in that town or could get there due to the stringent travel restrictions in Spain due to COVID-19. They were only able to see his cremation by video link through their mobile phones. Our Managing Director saw this video the next day and it was heartbreaking.

So as a tribute to Jose, our Managing Director, after much thought and personal soul searching, began a personal crusade to design and build an application in his honour. After many early mornings, late nights and weekends of work, the result of those endeavour is Celador. Version 1.0 being released just 3 months after Jose's death.

“Celador” is the Spanish word for “orderly” in the healthcare industry. An orderly is a hospital attendant whose job consists of assisting medical and nursing staff with various nursing and medical interventions. The highest role of an orderly is that of an operations assistant. An operations assistant requires people of a higher calibre who are knowledgeable in advanced medical terminology and assist with specialist surgery setups, and typically an operations assistant understands more about surgical procedures than does a registered nurse working outside of theatres. An operations assistant is a direct assistant to consultant-level doctors more than to nurses. These duties are classified as routine tasks involving no risk for the patient.

So it's fair to say that celadors, or orderlies, are a vital cog that keeps a hospital operating and are essential to their running; they probably come into contact with patients more than doctors actually do and run a close second to nurses.

So what does Celador do?

Celador supports the functions of a reception area by providing easily accessible information to answer any queries, whether they be by phone or in person.

Celador main screen allows for easy access to frequently queried information, like:

• Calls for assistance/ambulances.
• Inpatient details, such as room and bed assignments.
• Outpatient clinic appointments calendar.
• Operating Room (OR) bookings calendar.
• Treatment Room bookings calendar.
• Bed bookings calendar.
• Employee details, such as department & ward assigned to and if they are on duty.

Celador has built-in Email facilities which allows the user to read and send emails without the need of a separate Email client like Microsoft Outlook. It also has an Instant Messenger (IM) that allows users to send instant messages to other users who are logged on. Emails can be printed.

Celador maintains a list of available ambulances that can answer calls for assistance; it tracks their availability by recording scheduled maintenance. It can assign a driver and paramedic to each ambulance to track whose attending and their workload.

It can record details of calls for assistance, including patient and caller information. It can then assign an ambulance to the call and track its progress.

Once a patient arrived at the Emergency Room (ER), it can be admitted and it's added to the patient list.

It can report on calls attended to, drivers and paramedics attended calls and ambulance scheduled maintenance.

Celador maintains outpatient records; every patient assisted by the hospital over time whether they were admitted into the hospital, attended the Emergency department or visited the clinic, is included in these records. it can print a patient card, with an unique id as a barcode, and can easily Email patients when required.

When an outpatient is admitted, Celador now utilises an improved admission workflow, recording information about the reason(s) for the admission and booking bed, tests, procedures (including rooms) and medication.

Celador can also track and record medical procedures and laboratory testing performed on the outpatients, as requested by doctors.

Celador can produce patients' address book and phone book printouts.

Celador can scan a document, using a TWAIN compliant scanner, directly into the outpatient's record.

Celador maintains inpatient records for every patient admitted into the hospital. it can print a patient card, with an unique id as a barcode, and can easily Email patients when required.

It easily check bed availability and book a bed for the duration of the inpatients stay; if a inpatient is moved to another bed, it can easily adjust the bookings. If the inpatient requires surgery, it can easily check availability of an operating room (OR) and make a booking.

It can now easily check availability of a treatment room and make a booking.

Celador can also track and record results from doctors' visits, along with any requested medical procedures, laboratory testing and prescribed medication. It can then track and record the results of these medical procedures and laboratory testing performed.

Celador can produce patients' address book and phone book printouts.

Celador can scan a document, using a TWAIN compliant scanner, directly into the inpatient's record.

As mentioned already, Celador can easily check bed availability and book a bed for the duration of the inpatients stay, as well as, check availability of an operating room (OR) and make a booking.

As already mentioned, it can now easily check availability of a treatment room and make a booking as well.

This is done through a very easy calendar interface. Simply click on an available timeslot to begin the process of making such a booking; these booking can cover multiple timeslots. Obviously for beds, they can stretch over several days.

Celador can print these calendars.

Celador tracks the costs of the patients stay in hospital by tracking bed costs, doctors' visits costs, procedure costs, laboratory testing costs, medication costs, surgery costs (including attending staff and OR) and catering costs.

These costs may not actually represent the cost to the patient, these are the raw costs of their stay in hospital. Actual costs to the patient need to consider what any medical insurance may cover, whether that be governmental or private.

Celador can print a reports of these costs, as well as print a similar report for insurance companies covering all of their patients.

Celador can now print a similar report for any government health scheme/plan covering patients.

Celador supports the operation of an outpatient clinic. It manages appointment booking; this is done through a very easy calendar interface. Simply click on an available timeslot to begin the process of making such a booking; these booking can cover multiple timeslots.

A doctor can see their appointments queue and then record the outcomes of the appointment, including medical procedures and laboratory testing requested, and medication prescribed.

Celador can print these doctors' clinic calendars.

Celador can define and manage the accommodation arrangement within your hospital. It supports an accommodation structure of Department -> Ward -> Room -> Bed.

It assists managing bed bookings, this is done through a very easy calendar interface. Simply click on an available timeslot to begin the process of making such a booking; these booking can cover multiple timeslots.

Celador can print these beds' booking calendars, as well as, a bed allocation (and availability) listing.

Celador support outpatient doctor's visits within a outpatients clinic, as mentioned above, and doctor's visits in the wards.

It can record the outcome of these visits, including any diagnostic notes, medical procedures requested, laboratory testing requested and medication prescribed. If the visit is linked to passed visit(s), a link to them can be established.

For inpatient visits, the requested medical procedures and laboratory testing requests will be added to their specific processing queues.

The medical benefit schedule number, or visit type can now be selected.

Celador can print a report of these visits.

Celador can define different medical procedure available for execution within the hospital; it can store a PDF document containing the description and instructions for this procedure. It can then print this PDF.

The medical benefit schedule number and schedule government health scheme/fund refund can be recorded; this will be used during the invoicing process.

During their visits with patients, doctors request medical procedures, as mentioned above. Celador is able to record the results of the execution of these procedures. This can include diagnostic notes and documents like images.

For DICOM images, including studies in ZIP files, Celador will use an external viewer. Celador now includes AlgoM's DICOM Viewer, which is totally free to the user. Celador can interface with this viewer, but also has the the ability to interface with other viewers that meet certain requirements.

For standard images (JPEG, BMP or PNG), Celador includes an inbuilt viewer which can also print the image.

Celador can print a report of the results from these procedures.

Celador can scan a document, using a TWAIN compliant scanner, directly into the procedure's record.

Celador can print inpatient labels for attaching to hardcopy documentation and patient wristbands.

Celador can define different laboratory test available for execution within the hospital; this includes identifying the parameters to measure.

During their visits with patients, doctors request laboratory testing, as mentioned above. Celador is able to record the taking of samples and then results of the execution of these tests. This can include diagnostic notes and parameter measurements.

Celador provides facilities to allocate and schedule the execution for laboratory test across the technicians available. This can be done manually or via an auto option where a technician to each tests requests if capacity is available. This auto allocation uses a simple method where it evenly distributes the test requests among the available technicians.

Celador is able to support the taking of multiple samples for an individual testing request. It simply records the results for each sample. It is also able to support multiple tests for an individual sample. It simple records the results of each test.

The standard minutes the test takes to perform can be recorded; this will be used in the test scheduling process. Also, the medical benefit schedule number and schedule government health scheme/fund refund can be recorded; this will be used during the invoicing process.

Celador can print a report of the results from these tests.

Celador records vital signs taken from patients.

These vital signs include:

• Weight.
• Temperature.
• Blood pressure, both systolic and diastolic readings.
• Pulse rate.
• Respiration rate.
• Oxygen saturation.

Pulse pressure will be calculated from the other readings. Also, Pain notes and other comments can be recorded.

These vitals signs can then be charted.

Celador supports the operation of a Pharmacy within the hospital. It can maintain a store of available medication and manage re-stocking.

It maintains a list of suppliers and the medication they supply. It can issue purchasing orders and maintains an inventory of these.

It can fill prescriptions (scripts) issued by doctors during their visits to patients, and manage repeat scripts. It updates the inventory so that the current available stock of any item is known.

You can view at any time the purchase transactions and inventory transactions.

Celador can print a report which items require re-ordering to maintain the stock levels preferred.

Celador supports the operation of stores within the hospital. It can maintain stores of available items and manage re-stocking.

It maintains a list of suppliers and the items they supply. It can issue purchasing orders and maintains an inventory of these.

It can receive requests for items and fill them and update the inventory so that the current available stock of any item is known.

You can view at any time the purchase transactions and inventory transactions.

Celador can print a report which items require re-ordering to maintain the stock levels preferred. It can produce many reports that assist in analysing the inventory. It can also print a Suppliers Directory listing every supplier and the items they provide; this can be used as an easy reference when ordering new stock.

Celador supports the supply of meals to inpatients within he hospital. It can maintain a store of available food items and manage re-stocking.

It maintains a list of suppliers and the items they supply. It can issue purchasing orders and maintains an inventory of these.

It can design meals and build menus catering for different dietary needs like Diabetes or Coeliac. It can then build weekly menu plans using these menus and print individual menu requests sheets for each patient. Once the patients have made their choices, Celador is able to review if re-ordering is required and then supply the meals. It updates the inventory so that the current available stock of any item is known.

You can view at any time the purchase transactions and inventory transactions.

Celador can print a report which items require re-ordering to maintain the stock levels preferred.

Celador supports the recruitment process to fill vacant positions. Vacant positions, for which a recruitment process should be initiated, can be recorded or upload into Celador and any applicable attachments relating to the position can be loaded, like a role description. Applying candidates can be recorded and any attachments relating to the candidate can be loaded, like a resumes.

Celador supports the interview process and records the results and comments from each interviewer. It can then calculate an overall score and rank the candidates. It will then record the final decision and the successful candidate.

Once a vacant position is filled, the new employee will need to be onboarded once they actually begin work. If an employee is leaving the organisation, they need to be offboarded not matter whether it's a result of a resignation, retirement or dismissal.

Celador provides employee onboarding and offboarding checklist facilities. Checklist can be defined for onboarding, resignation offboarding, retirement offboarding and dismissal offboarding.

Celador maintains your employee’s details including their personal details, manager, next of kin, a photo, email address and network user id. It stores any documents, like resumes as attachments.

It can record the position the employee has with the organisation and which department and ward they are assigned to.

You can save a photo of the employee and generate a unique id for that employee.

The barcode generated used the common Code 39 barcode type used for various labels such as name badges, inventory and industrial applications. The symbology of the Code 39 character set consists of barcode symbols representing numbers 0-9, upper-case letters A-Z, the space character and the following symbols: – . $ / + %. Lower-case characters may also be used.

The photo and barcode will appear on the employee’s ID card when produced.

It can generate an employees address book and phone list.

Celador can scan a document, using a TWAIN compliant scanner, directly into the employee's record.

Celador can record additional salary details about the employee that will be used when recording salary expenses.

Celador can generate an organisational chart which can be either the full organisation or a department.

While Celador already supports the recording of an employee's salary package. It also now allows for the definition of remuneration benefits and salary packaging.

Celador can define remuneration salary options other than actual cash. It then provides facilities for the definition of an employee's salary package including cash and benefits. It can print a salary package letter at any time so that the employee can access this information.

It also provides these facilities when making an offer to a prospective new employee. It can generate an offer letter which can be sent to the candidate for their acceptance.

Celador supports the generation of shift resourcing plans per department/ward. Shifts and the different roles/jobs within these shifts for each department/ward can be defined. Plans can be put together in a graphical calendar representatiion which can also be printed and distributed to staff.

Celador reviews each resourcing selection to ensure that a staff member has no overlapping shift. It also ensures that a staff member is not allowcated to shifts without a normal shift gap in between, i.e. no 2 shifts in a row, in order to manage staff fatigue.

Celador can print a report with these shift plans. Each employee can print their own plan for the shifts that they've been included in.

Celador allows staff to make claims for refunds of working expenses. The staff member can attach supporting documentation, including receipts and invoices. Celador supports the scanning of these attachment through a TWAIN compliant scanner. The staff member submits the claim and it's then sent to their manager for review and approval.

It provides multiple reports to support monitoring and managing of these claims.

Celador does not provide support for the payroll process do to the fact that each country has its own laws and requirements in this area, it does provide facilities to record the expenses due to payroll.

These expenses can be recorded in one of 2 ways:

• Manually enter each employee's payroll data for the reporting period; Celador will use the new employee salary information o calculate the expense.
• Import an Excel spreadsheet containing these details; this spreadsheet should be generated from the payroll system being used. A template spreadsheet has been included in the release package.

Passed payroll periods can be enquired.

Celador allows for the recording of non stock/inventory expenses; these expenses are usually from service providers like utilities such as electricity, telephone or water. These service providers deliver a service not goods.

It can define the service providers and what services they provide. Their invoices can be recorded as well as any payment made towards those invoices.

Celador maintains a table of medical benefits schedule codes. These codes are usually provided by the government’s medical health scheme/fund. They are used to identify the service provided which in turn, identifies the benefit/refund that the scheme and/or private health insurer provides.

They are linked to services provided and used during the invoicing process. They serve as a reference to any government health scheme/plan and private health insurers when claims are lodged.

Celador provides facilities for viewing and managing the stock levels of all items in the inventory.

Items are group by vendor. Items that are below the target level defined, will show their current level number in red. The re-ordering of items which are in short supply can then be initiated. Purchase orders for each vendor with items below the desires level are automatically generated as per any other manually entered purchase order.

Celador allows for the recording of non operating income; this income could be from a government institution or a private or public donor.

It can define the contributors information. Their contributions can be recorded as well as any payment made by them towards those commitments.

Celador generates invoices for services provided to patients; these can be for inpatients upon their release or outpatients following a visit to the clinic.

Celador can print receipts for payments made by patients; these can be for inpatients upon their release or outpatients following a visit to the clinic.

For inpatients, Celador now provides a new workflow to complete the patient's discharge. A discharge form needs to be completed stating the reasons for the discharge, any follow-up required and any medication prescribed; it also needs to state if this was approved by the doctor. The the invoicing process is initiated.

When an invoice is generated, Celador will include all outstanding charges for service provided that haven't been invoiced yet. The only exception to this rule are the meals provided to inpatients; Celador can be setup to invoice all meals provided or ignore them as meals may be included in the bed rate.

Celador can now submit these patient invoices to any government health scheme/plan and the patients' own health insurance via Email.

Celador can then record payments made towards these invoices from whatever source; this payments could come from the patient themselves, their health insurer or a government health insurance scheme.

A budget is a financial plan for a defined period, often one year. It may also include planned sales volumes and revenues, resource quantities, costs and expenses, assets, liabilities, and cash flows. Companies, governments, families, and other organizations use it to express strategic plans of activities or events in measurable terms.

Celador provides budgeting functionality which allows for developing an overall hospital budget and individual departmental budgets. It uses a top-down approach where the overall hospital budget is developed and then it’s allocated to the departments.

As funds are budgeted to each departmental budget, Celador ensures that the overal hospital budget is not exceed. It then tracks as income and expenses are recorded to as to monitor the progress of the hospital/department to the budget.

Celador provides accounting/financial report to support the financial administration of the hospital. Most of these reports can be viewed on an enquiry screen, generated as a PDF or printed out.

These reports include:

• Balance Sheet.
• General Ledger.
• Income Statement.
• Cash Flow Statement.
• Tax Report.
• Invoices Due.
• Payments Due.

Obviously, these reports are generated using the expenses and income data recorded throughout the application, which is recorded using classes and categories to support the financial reporting.

Celador support the performance appraisal process by tracking and recording the results of the process. It allows for the generation of questions (KPIs and Values) which can be selected for an employee's appraisal.

Celador records both the employee's and reviewer's rating and comments for each question and then can record the agreed rating. It can generate development plans to address concerns identified during the review or to support further development of the employee. This development plan can include internal and/or external courses.

Celador maintains a list of training providers and their courses in order to support the generation of these development plans.

Celador can manage an allocated employee’s training courses, including their progress and results.

The training courses are part of the development plan produced during the performance appraisal process. In this screen you can record their progress. You are also able to add additional training course that weren’t part of the original development plan.

Celador provides facilities to support hazard & incident management. Hazards/incidents can be recorded including description, date & time, location, injuries, parties involved, witnesses and recommended actions. Any supporting documents can be attached. These reports are then submitted for investigation and review.

For incidents, any injuries are added to the Injuries/Illnesses Register, which can then be used to manage them.

Celador, as mentioned above, maintains an Injuries/Illnesses Register. This register not only record injuries resulting from incidents, but can allow be used to register and manage staff illnesses which prevent them from working. Here additional information about the injury/illness can be recorded and, following an investigation, any controls or actions undertaken can also be recorded.

If the staff member required to be off work for a period, a return to work plan can be requested.

Celador, as mentioned above, generate a Return-to-Work plan for any staff member whowas off work due to an injury or illness. The plan can include medical assessment from the staff member's own medical practitioner and may require are series of actions to be performed prior to the staff member returning to work in any capacity. A return to work goal can be defined and stepped plan prepared. If the staff member requires any rehabilitation, this can also be recorded and managed.

In order to support these Return-to-Work plans, Celador maintains lists of the staff members' health insurers and medical practitioners. It allows maintains a list of approved rehabilitation service providers.

Celador provides support for talent management of your workforce by managing your staff's development and training plans.

It also support succession planning by providing facilities to identify staff that will be leaving the organisation in the near future and identifying and developing potential replacement(s).

Celador provides facilities for asset management. It can define asset types and location where these assets are kept. It can register assets, including a description, photo, manufacturer, model, serial number and store any documents, like brochures. It can generate identifying barcodes and print asset label which are then attached to the assets. It can allocate assets to staff and monitor their return when the staff member terminates their employment with the organisation.

Assets can be allocated to an individual staff member, a department, a ward, a room, a bed, an operating room or a clinic treatment room.

Celador can record the allocation of assets to treatment rooms, operating rooms, departments, wards, rooms or beds, besides staff members.

This is information is then used to determine what assets are actually available for other allocations.

Celador provides housekeeping facilities. Cleaning request for treatment rooms, operating rooms or ward beds can be created.

These requests can then be viewed and actioned by housekeeping staff. They can record the linen changed (which will be sent to the laundry) and any items found which may had been lost by staff or patients.

Celador can record the consumption of cleaning supplies, as well as, the disposal of inventory items like linen, if they are damaged, or any other material held in the inventory.

This is information is then used to maintain an accurate inventory stock level information which assists in determining when additional stock needs to be purchased. It also updates the balance sheet as consumption and disposal of stock lowers the value of the available inventory.

When dirty linen is collected as part of processing a cleaning request, it requires washing. Celador can generate laundry bundles from all the inventory linen & towels items collected. These items have been marked as "unavailable" when they are submitted for laundry.

When items are washed, Celador can return these items into circulation by marking then as "available".

Celador support a lost & found register. Items that are reported lost by patients are recorded, as well as items found by staff.

When a lost item is found, Celador can record its return to its owner.

When a found item's owner is identified, Celador can its return.

This represents a brief view of Celador's functionality; the best way to see if it fits your needs is to download it and install it, even if it's just in one workstation. It's free so you can trial it for as long as you require.

While Celador does not include a built-in DICOM viewer, as mentioned earlier, it was previously designed to interface with either MicroDicom's free DICOM Viewer for Windows or Medixant's RadiAnt DICOM Viewer; but neither was free for commercial use. Celador has now been updated to interface with AlgoM's Free DICOM Viewer, which is a fully free viewer. It has been included in the Celador release package; but it can also be downloaded from our Download page.

You can find more information about AlgoM's Free DICOM Viewer here.

But if you're looking for a more powerful tool which is classified as a medical product, you wouldn't go wrong in checking out NeoLogica's RemotEye Suite. The RemotEye Viewer module, intended for diagnostic reading, is CE-marked as a class IIa medical device and FDA-cleared as a class II medical device (K141061).

Please Note: Celador has not been integrated with RemotEye Suite which is designed to work closely with a PACS Server.

Celador provides strong accounting functionality, but not payroll generation, facilities. It was just simply out of reach for us to develop payroll generation functionality covering all the different payroll and taxation regimes around the world in a single application. The are companies that specialise exclusively in payroll solutions.

If you want more extensive accounting functionality, there are also many products out there that provide that and many have been customised for the diversity of account practices and requirements of different countries. They usually also cover payroll.

If you are based in Australia, as we are, you couldn't go wrong having a look at Free Accounting Software's products here. They provide 2 very reasonable priced accounting products:

• A desktop product that is Single Touch Payroll compliant and provides BAS lodgement. This is a free product.
  
  
• BAS OFF, a Cloud based product that provides electronic lodgements direct to the ATO, including BAS, STP, TFN and more, Single Touch Payroll (STP), automatic payroll award calculations, customised invoices and accounts receivable, inventory with automatic FIFO calculations, financial reporting and advanced account reconciliations. BAS OFF is a low cost but high quality accounting software. It's designed to handle the accounting requirements for organisations with many hundreds of employees.

They are a Chartered Accounting Australia and New Zealand practice and a registered tax agent. They are also a Standard Business Reporting (SBR) Partner.

If you are based elsewhere, you’ll need to get some professional advice but you could have a look at Wave Financial Inc. They provide Wave Suite, accounting software; it provides functionality covering Invoicing, Payments, Accounting, Payroll and Advisors.

They provide various pricing plans from a basic free plan to a paid, full featured pro plan. Please refer to Wave Financial's own website.

Wave Financial Inc is an award-winning financial services software company, with more than 250 employees serving more than 500,000 customers around the world.