The user interface

A simple user interface was produced using Streamlit, an interactive interface for web browser-based applications, allowing the user to adjust elements of the placement optimisation tool, and to view progress as the tool produces schedules.

Once all schedules are produced, a comparison table is both displayed and saved down, summarising the various scoring components and helping the user begin to understand which schedule of those produced might be the best.

The final benefit of the tool is that insight into the schedules can be easily obtained as the schedules are generated electronically, meaning they can be easily reformatted to provide a different view of the information. As an example, it is straightforward to change a schedule from a format where the placements on each ward are shown, to a format where the placements for each student are shown.

This simplicity extends to being able to calculate hours on placement each week, which is currently a mandatory reporting ask for Trusts. We hear that a substantial amount of time is spent by placement coordinators manually analysing placement schedules to produce reporting around the hours of placement time the Trust has supported each week, from each university.

As part of the tool, the final schedule produced is reported in several different ways:

• From the student’s perspective, showing what placements locations they have been allocated for each week of the studies
• From the ward’s perspective, showing what students they have on placement with them and when
• From a ward capacity utilisation perspective, showing the placement coordinator where there is spare capacity if a placement needs to be manually reallocated
• From a placement hours perspective, providing various summaries of hours across wards, university cohorts and both weekly and quarterly summaries for the mandatory reporting required of the Trust.

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