In light of the recent pandemic, we have come to realize how important of a role technology plays in our lives. In many ways, the advancement and use of technology are crucial to our survival.
That’s why WORLD OF BUZZ is collaborating with Maxis in conjunction with their new brand purpose launch “Always Be Ahead” to highlight the stories of people and organisations who have embraced technology to make everyone’s lives much easier.
Meet Tiffany Khoo, founder of WeAssist Sdn Bhd & the person behind Locum Apps
Tiffany, who used to work in the human resource department of a hospital, found it difficult to book locum workers or medical staff to fill temporary duties during the pandemic. Taking inspiration from other gig apps like Fiverr and PeoplePerHour, Tiffany came up with Locum Apps to help ensure healthcare facilities like hospitals and clinics are never understaffed especially during critical moments like the global pandemic we are going through right now.
Tiffany (third from the left) with the WeAssist team.
This app helps BOTH healthcare facilities & healthcare staff lookout for temporary workers and jobs respectively
Locum Apps helps healthcare facilities like hospitals and clinics post jobs whenever they need more doctors or maybe a nurse to fill in for another one who is on leave (yes medical staff go on holidays and get sick too sometimes).
On the other hand, the app is also where healthcare workers can register themselves to find available work at hospitals and clinics. They get paid by the hour and quite instantly too, depending on how long their shifts are!
“We had a slow but steady start since the launch, providing almost 300 hours of jobs across KL, Penang, Johor and even Terengganu!”
“Currently, there are three healthcare facilities that have been booking locum jobs with our app and we are very excited to invite a few more onboard in due course”, Tiffany explained during our one-on-one chat with her.
They even have a cute mascot named ‘Locat’!
The team behind the app also ensures that all the locum personnel are legitimate
Doctors and nurses are generally people we need to trust. After all, our lives are in their hands. Thankfully, Locum Apps filters and verifies all its registrants when they sign up to make sure they have the proper and necessary skills as well as knowledge to work in a healthcare facility.
So don’t worry, there are no quacks in this app!
The app also allows employers to rate their locum staff just like how you would rate a driver on an e-hailing app. This ensures that healthcare facilities hire high-quality staff too.
Why was it crucial to start this app? Can’t hospitals hire staff using any other portals?
Traditionally, healthcare facilities would have to schedule calls and interviews to find staff that can cover a shift. This process is tedious and can create a potentially life-threatening shortage of staff at medical facilities. In recent months, we’ve seen this issue happening all over the world. You can’t simply hire anyone to work in healthcare facilities after all!
“However, with Locum Apps, nursing and human resource managers can skip this process and book locum jobs with the press of a button”.
Thanks to the advancement of technology, the app also helped screen staff across Malaysia during the peak of COVID-19
At the height of the pandemic, out-of-state travel was strictly prohibited and this posed a problem when the government made it a requirement for companies to screen ALL their staff before they could resume work.
“As such, the app was utilised across the country to send local doctors to conduct COVID-19 screening in their home states”, Tiffany explained
Diagnosis labs were then able to collect swabs using the geolocation feature on the app which enabled a quicker and more efficient way to screen staff. They managed to screen over 10,000 people, allowing them to return to work while containing the spread of the virus.
“Being able to help was one of the motivations for our team to launch the app during the Movement Control Order (MCO)”, she added.
To always stay ahead, WeAssist is also working on a new healthcare app, and it’s for the people
Tiffany revealed that a new healthcare app is in the works that aims to provide a home care solution which supplies medically certified care professionals to homes everywhere, providing on-demand access to services.
“We are currently in the midst of developing ‘Locum Home’, an app that anyone can use to get medical and nursing needs met with the assurance of qualified healthcare staff”.
This is certainly a great step ahead seeing as to how medical attention is also sometimes required at home.
With advances in tech, Tiffany thinks patients will ultimately face better outcome in the future
When asked about how the advancement of technology has helped the healthcare industry, Tiffany shares an example about the CT scanner:
“Let’s look at the CT scanner for example. Many years ago it was considered a marvel. Since then, technology has evolved and changed over the years to allow us to obtain even better results with less radiation”.
This is just one of many aspects of medical technology that has improved over the years, yet it has helped us continue to obtain helpful x-ray images of patients while reducing radiation damage during the process.
Tiffany also mentions the possibility of digital prescriptions that might help with remote healthcare. If there was a way to execute it safely, then distance would not be a problem for those who practice telemedicine (the practice of caring for patients remotely when the patient and healthcare provider are not physically present with each other).
“Technology is an enabler across all industries, and the healthcare industry is not excluded. In this regard, we most certainly can consider technology as extremely important to healthcare“.
That’s why Maxis wants to celebrate individuals, like Tiffany Khoo, who are innovative with technology & encourage everyone to ‘Always Be Ahead’
As we delve deeper into the digital era, Maxis wants to inspire every Malaysian out there to utilise technology in creative and helpful ways so that we, as a nation, will #AlwaysBeAhead. Find out more about Maxis’ new brand purpose or read more inspiring stories like these here.
