“Shift planning is employee satisfaction planning.” Prof. Wieland Sommer came to this conclusion in the fall of 2013 on an afternoon in the staff break room at the Klinikum Großhadern in Munich. Wieland Sommer worked there as a radiologist, and he took on the responsibility for shift planning in his department. His everyday working life changed considerably from one day to the next. He spent 25 hours a month managing shift requests, applications, vacations, sick days, qualifications and last but not least, his team’s complaints.He felt how his motivation suffered from the inefficiency of his work and observed how dissatisfied his colleagues were with the shift planning chaos.

Wieland decided to look for suitable shift planning software, but soon discovered that no software on the market could come close to solving the complexity of his tasks.The conventional shift scheduling programs he had previously reviewed were overwhelmed by the overlapping shift models consisting of early, late and night shifts, a variety of legal frameworks, different workplaces, doctors and employees with different qualifications and experience, as well as the varying staff requirements.

At that time, he had also talked to one of his doctoral students, who was passionate not only about medicine but also software development. The pair hit it off right away and were actually able to automate the complex shift planning task to a large extent in just 6 months with the help of an intelligent algorithm. This solved nearly all the problems, and the rest is history. When doctors in other departments and practices saw that the tool could save up to 80% of time and nerves, they started using it just as successfully to plan their shifts. Planerio was officially founded in 2016, and today its software is used in over 500 medical practices, clinics and care facilities across Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Planerio is continually being developed by a team of more than 40 people with the help of artificial intelligence.Thanks to the numerous additional functions & features, such as time recording or payroll accounting, the shift planning software has become the operating system for human resources management in the healthcare industry.

An experienced team of managers and partners, consisting of industry and IT experts, makes sure that the company understands and satisfies the acute needs of its customers while not neglecting digital research and development for the healthcare sector. For example, Planerio is also involved in several research consortia, which are supported by the digitization strategy of the German Federal Government.The beneficiaries are thousands of satisfied employees of care facilities, medical practices and hospitals, who can view the up-to-date shift plans and working time accounts online at any time, enter shift requests, schedule and apply for vacations and training and even swap shifts with zero fuss.