Hosptial nurses are the backbone of the health care system. But these essential care givers routinely sacrifice their personal life to meet hospital (shift) needs.

The transformational power of AI can help.

Today's scheduling systems present drop-down menu after drop-down menu, requiring multiple steps for even basic tasks. While these systems try to accommodate personal schedules (lives), in reality they present static information on yet more screens for busy nurses to do the work of finding coverage, making changes and avoiding collissions between personal and work schedules. This frustrating inefficiency leads so workflow 'work-arounds' that result in operational bottlnecks. One example is the never-ending stream of SMS texts, office drop-ins, and emails by nurses to their manager asking to change their schedule, seeking help, or sharing updates on their personal situation. While laudable, these ad hoc solutions cost health systems millions of dollars in lost productivity and add more stress to an already stressful environment. But scheduling failures don't end there. Nurses routinely have to find their own coverage (swaps) by asking their inner circle of nurse friends to help.  If these few friends can't help, which happens often, the nurse manager has to source, validate, assess cost implications, and record the swap. So why can't technology be used to map and expand these (micro) inner friend circles, simultaneously helping nurses when they're stuck and eliminating the need for external (1099) staffing?

These scheduling system failures are why Catalyst by Wellstar, an innovation incubator and venture firm created by Wellstar Health System of Georgia and High Alpha Innovation, a leading venture studio, joined forces to create vflok Inc., a Workforce AI startup leveraging the transformative power of generative AI and advanced machine learning to give nurses shift schedules that fit their life instead of asking them to fit their life into a shift schedule.

The ‘V’ formation is one of nature’s most successful competitive strategies, enabling a flock of birds to travel amazingly long distances by helping each other optimize resources. Of all birds, the fastest and longest duration bird is the Swift, a master at maximizing resources to achieve its mission.

We leverage this principle in our technology design, using generative AI and advance machine learing to perform tasks for care teams and avoid collissions between personal and work schedules.

Our mission is to free nurses & nurse managers from the constant demands associated with shift scheduling, change management, and shift 'recruitment' and to empower central staffing teams by real-time sourcing and booking of the lowest cost internal resource to fill a shift vacancy. Success means Nurse Managers spend more time helping patients & clinical teams and health systems' improve the service capabilities and economic performance of central staffing divisions.