How do you support continuous clinical improvement to ensure better quality healthcare while remaining meticulously organized throughout the process?
The Clinical Research Center (CRC) team at the North Metropolitan Health Service (NMHS) has the answer — rely on a high-quality task management tool.
We had the pleasure of speaking to Milan Dragovic, NMHS Senior Scientist and CRC’s Acting Manager, to learn about how Plaky changed the way his team organizes work throughout their projects.
In our interview, he talks about:
- The team he leads at the CRC and their activities,
- What a typical workday looks like for his team,
- How he learned about Plaky,
- How Plaky helps his team stay organized,
- His favorite Plaky features, and
- Who he’d recommend the tool to.
If you’re eager to learn how Milan’s team uses Plaky to stay methodical and organized in their line of work, keep reading.
Table of Contents
About Milan Dragovic and his team
Milan Dragovic’s academic background is more than impressive, given that he has experience in a range of fields, including psychology, sociology, psychiatry, and neuroscience. However, the work he does today goes beyond academic accomplishments.
Milan is an expert in utilizing advanced statistical methodologies, such as:
- Latent class analysis,
- Structural equation modeling, and
- Taxometric programs.
Due to his experience with data mining and machine learning techniques, Milan is also able to skillfully handle large datasets. What’s more, he has long been involved in encouraging the use of advanced data solutions.
“Since 2016, I have been passionately promoting the use of the Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap) application for efficient data management for research and operational projects.”
Milan has also been actively involved in training others on how to use the REDCap System across Western Australia.
Unsurprisingly, his efforts were recognized at the WA Health REDCap Symposium of 2022, where he earned an award as the most helpful REDCap User for 2022.
The CRC team
The Clinical Research Centre (CRC) is a state-wide service that plays an important role in helping North Metropolitan Health Service (NMHS) deliver top-quality research- and evidence-based mental health care.
Based in Gascoyne House on the Graylands Hospital campus in Perth, Australia, the center aims to improve the quality of NMHS mental health services through a range of activities involving:
- Research,
- Training,
- Coaching,
- Teaching, and
- Innovation.
A few of the key activities CRC is involved in include:
- Conducting clinical translational research,
- Offering guidance and expert advice on the development, planning, and presentation of QI (Quality Improvement) projects, and
- Supporting and coordinating clinical audits.
Milan briefly explained to us his team’s objectives:
“[The CRC team focuses] on several primary goals, including delivering advanced data solutions, enhancing organizational analytic capacity, and overseeing standardized research ethics and governance processes.”
When talking about his team, Milan emphasizes their expertise and academic background:
“The CRC team consists of seven highly educated professionals, with the majority possessing doctorate degrees in various disciplines, such as psychology, psychiatric epidemiology, business intelligence, and health care economics.”
The CRC team’s typical workday
Given the expansive nature of their work, Milan’s team typically spends the majority of their workdays dealing with data:
“We spend most of our time on data manipulation, analytics, report writing, and integration. We also communicate often with clinicians and executives.”
That said, it’s not just all work and no play at CRC. According to Milan, the team also makes sure they’re able to relax from time to time:
“For some fun, we enjoy playing soccer/football, table tennis, chess, or going to our favorite pizza restaurant.”
The CRC team’s main challenges
Milan highlights reluctance to embrace new tech as one of the main difficulties his team faces in their line of work:
“Working within an organization that is notoriously hesitant to adopt new data management technologies presents a unique challenge.”
Prevailing over such a challenge doesn’t come easy, as it involves encouraging people to venture into what they would see as uncharted territory.
But, as Milan explains, it’s possible if you take the time to understand the hesitation and try to resolve it:
“Overcoming this challenge involves understanding their concerns and educating stakeholders about the benefits.”
How Milan discovered Plaky
Curiously enough, Milan has his own family to thank for introducing him to Plaky:
“Thanks to my awesome daughter Anja, I have become a passionate Plaky user too. Although my team is in the early stages of incorporating this tool, its integration within the team has generally been positive.”
Seeing as there are so many different project management tools for small teams on the market, we wondered whether Milan decided to switch to Plaky after using another tool for a while.
But as luck would have it, this is the first project management software the team has ever committed to:
“We did not use any project management tools for our projects before Plaky. However, we did occasionally experiment with Jira and MS project management tools.”
💡 Plaky Pro Tip
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How Plaky helps Milan’s team stay organized
Plaky comes with a varied set of features that help teams across many different industries stay organized at work and keep track of their projects.
Milan and his team mainly rely on Plaky to keep track of all their ongoing work:
“We use Plaky primarily to maintain a well-structured, transparent backlog list containing tasks and responsibilities related to multiple projects.”
In Plaky, users can create separate boards for all their projects and populate them with all their tasks, thus essentially creating extensive to-do lists — much like Milan’s team does.
The tool lets users organize their work further by grouping tasks into different sections, manipulating task information structure using fields, and so much more.
Milan’s team also appreciates the fact they can make Plaky boards from scratch:
But what makes Plaky so useful to Milan’s team? Which specific benefits have made them stick with Plaky and incorporate it into their work?
💡 Plaky Pro Tip
Plaky has a range of pre-made templates for many use cases, such as event planning, recruitment, and more. Check them out in the template library:
Benefit #1: Plaky improves project planning, communication, and information sharing
When it comes to the benefits of using Plaky, Milan highlights the following:
“From my perspective, the major benefits of using Plaky include streamlined project planning, improved communication and collaboration, and simplified information sharing.”
As a project planning software, Plaky serves as a centralized platform for planning, assigning, prioritizing, and tracking all your project tasks.
Plaky also eases collaboration in teams by letting users share files in task cards and thus keep pertinent information about the projects organized. Plus, users can communicate in the task cards via comments to speed up information sharing, keep the team engaged throughout the project, and encourage better project collaboration.
💡 Plaky Pro Tip
If you want to learn how crucial good communication is in project management and how you could improve it, check out the post below:
Benefit #2: Plaky allows for effective progress tracking
Milan also emphasizes progress tracking as one of the crucial benefits of Plaky:
“Most importantly, [using Plaky gives us] the ability to effectively track and monitor progress.”
In Plaky, users can check task and project progress at a glance and thus easily stay informed about any recent developments. In fact, Plaky comes with a few key progress-tracking features that aim to promote transparency and accountability among teams, including:
- Various sort and filter options,
- Different board views,
- The activity log, and
- The summary row.
Milan’s favorite Plaky features
Interestingly enough, Milan’s team doesn’t stop at using Plaky as their preferred project and task management software.
They’re also quite familiar with the resources that are readily available on Plaky’s website for users to peruse:
“Curiously, of all the features the Plaky producers offer, the Knowledge Hub is our favorite. It’s like a treasure of knowledge, neat, and well organized.”
💡 Plaky Pro Tip
Learn more about work and project management by browsing our original resources:
Who would Milan recommend Plaky to and why?
When asked about whether Plaky could prove useful to other teams and industries, Milan didn’t hesitate to recommend the tool:
“We are advocating the use of simple but effective tools across our organization. In this regard, Plaky is perfectly suited for systematic use across various government departments.”
As a project management tool for the public sector, Plaky’s aim is to ensure public and government organizations stay accountable and nurture transparency across their programs.
Moreover, Plaky helps these organizations boost their productivity, allowing them to set clear goals, easily manage teams and their activity, and communicate effectively and safely.
Final thoughts: Plaky ensures team efficiency and methodical project management
Overall, Milan believes Plaky has helped his team improve their work organization and project management.
As he puts it:
“Working on multiple projects requires structured attention to various tasks, roles, deadlines, and timely deliverables. Plaky serves as a valuable tool that enables us to stay methodical and organized in our work.”
The CRC team has responded positively to Plaky’s integration into their workflow, and they’ve already had a chance to reap the benefits.
This ultimately shows simple, intuitive organizational software like Plaky can indeed make all the difference when trying to streamline your work and manage tasks on a daily basis.
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