Improvement work takes many forms.
Some initiatives are large, structured quality improvement projects with aims, measures, driver diagrams and PDSA cycles. Others begin as a simple idea from a frontline team. Some work is driven by audit findings, research activity, OKRs, local improvement plans or wider organisational programmes.
All of it matters.
But in many organisations, these different types of improvement work are managed in different places. Projects sit in one system. Ideas are captured in a spreadsheet. Audit actions are tracked in documents. OKRs are reviewed elsewhere. Research and evaluation work may sit in separate governance processes altogether.
The result is fragmentation.
Teams have to work across multiple systems, tools and templates. Leaders struggle to see the full picture of improvement activity. Improvement departments spend time manually pulling together information for reports, dashboards and governance meetings.
Simana is designed to change that.
One of the major developments from Life QI to Simana is the ability to run and track far more than traditional QI projects. Simana gives organisations one collaborative platform for managing improvement work in all its forms, from small ideas and quick wins through to complex programmes and fully governed improvement projects.
QI projects remain central to improvement. They provide a structured way to define a problem, develop change ideas, test improvements and measure impact over time. But QI projects are only one part of the wider improvement picture.
Across healthcare organisations, improvement also happens through:
Some of this work is formal and highly structured. Some is lighter touch. Some starts small and grows into something more substantial. If improvement only becomes visible when it is packaged as a full QI project, organisations miss a significant amount of the work happening across their teams.
Simana recognises that improvement does not always begin as a project. Sometimes it begins as an idea, an audit finding, a strategic objective, a local priority or a small opportunity spotted by the people closest to the work.
When different types of improvement work are managed in different places, the experience becomes harder for everyone.
For end users, fragmented systems create friction.
Teams may need to use one tool for QI projects, another for ideas, another for audit actions and another for reporting. Each system has its own login, structure, terminology and way of working. This creates avoidable admin and makes improvement feel more complicated than it needs to be.
It also makes collaboration harder. Conversations happen in email, evidence sits in shared drives, actions are tracked in spreadsheets and project updates are copied into reports manually.
For leaders and improvement departments, the problem is visibility. When improvement data is spread across multiple systems, it becomes difficult to answer basic questions:
Without a shared system, reporting becomes manual. Dashboards are incomplete. Governance meetings rely on information collected from multiple sources. The organisation may be doing a great deal of improvement work, but still lack a clear and accurate view of it.
Simana brings different improvement workflows together in one place.
That means teams can run many types of improvement work using consistent, familiar functionality. Whether someone is submitting an idea, running a quick win, managing an audit, delivering a QI project or tracking progress against an OKR, the work happens inside the same collaborative environment.
This matters because teams should not need to learn a new system every time the type of improvement work changes.
In Simana, different workflows can share familiar features such as:
The workflow may be different, but the experience remains consistent. That makes improvement easier to participate in and easier to manage.
Simana includes best practice templates for a wide range of improvement workflows.
These templates give organisations a strong starting point for managing different types of work consistently, while still allowing local configuration around priorities, departments and services.
QI Projects support structured improvement work.
They are designed for initiatives that need clear aims, measures, change ideas, testing, learning and governance.
A QI Project might include tools such as driver diagrams, PDSA cycles, measures, charts, risks, actions and learning logs.
This workflow is suitable for more substantial improvement work where teams need to understand a problem, test changes and demonstrate measurable impact.
Not every improvement needs a full project structure.
Quick Wins are designed for smaller, simpler improvements that can be delivered with lighter governance and less documentation.
They give teams a way to capture and track practical changes without forcing them into a more detailed project workflow than they need.
This is useful when the improvement opportunity is clear, the change is relatively low risk and the team needs a simple way to record action and outcome.
Ideas help organisations capture improvement opportunities from across their teams.
An idea may begin as a suggestion from a member of staff, a patient insight, a service concern or an opportunity identified through everyday work.
Using an Ideas workflow, organisations can collect, assess, prioritise and progress ideas in a consistent way.
Importantly, ideas do not need to stay as ideas. Where an idea has potential, it can transition into another workflow, such as a QI Project or Quick Win. This helps organisations move naturally from suggestion to action without losing the original context.
Audit work often identifies opportunities for improvement. But audit findings and actions are frequently managed separately from wider improvement activity.
Simana allows audit workflows to sit alongside other improvement work, making it easier to plan audits, record findings, assign actions and track follow-up. This helps teams connect audit activity with improvement delivery, rather than treating audit as a separate reporting exercise.
Objectives and Key Results help organisations align improvement work with strategic priorities.
In Simana, OKR workflows can be used to define objectives, track key results, assign ownership and monitor progress over time. This helps connect local improvement activity with wider organisational goals.
A department might use OKRs to track strategic priorities while also linking related projects, ideas or programmes that contribute to those objectives.
Some improvement-related work is focused on research, evaluation or evidence generation. This type of work may need a different structure from a QI project.
Research and evaluation workflows can support study details, approvals, evidence, outputs, findings and learning.
Bringing this work into Simana helps organisations connect research and evaluation activity with wider improvement priorities and organisational learning.
Improvement Plans can support local teams, services or departments that need to organise a set of improvement activities without necessarily treating each one as a standalone project.
They can be useful for managing priorities, actions, progress updates and local governance.
This provides a practical way to coordinate improvement activity at team, service or departmental level.
Programs allow organisations to coordinate related pieces of improvement work.
A program might bring together multiple projects, quick wins, ideas, audits or OKRs under a shared strategic priority. This helps teams manage larger bodies of work while maintaining visibility of the individual activities contributing to the wider aim.
Programs are particularly useful for organisations running improvement at scale, where leaders need to understand both overall progress and the detail behind it.
The workflows above provide a strong starting point for many organisations. But Simana is not limited to a fixed list of workflow types.
For organisations with more mature improvement capability, fully configurable templates make it possible to create workflows that reflect local methods, terminology, lifecycle stages, governance requirements and reporting needs.
That means organisations can define their own workflows, call them what they want, and decide how each workflow should operate.
A customer might create workflows for:
Each workflow can have its own structure, available tools, fields, stages and governance approach. This gives organisations the flexibility to bring more of their improvement work into Simana without forcing everything into a generic project model.
Improvement work often evolves.
An idea may become a quick win. A quick win may reveal the need for a larger QI project. An audit finding may generate an improvement action. A programme may create several linked projects.
Simana supports this reality by allowing work to move between workflows where appropriate.
For example, a member of staff might submit an idea to improve a discharge process. The idea is reviewed, discussed and prioritised. Once agreed, it can be transitioned into a QI Project, carrying forward the original context and helping the team continue the work without starting again from scratch.
This is important because improvement is rarely linear.
A flexible workflow system allows organisations to manage work as it develops, rather than forcing teams to decide the final shape of the work at the moment it is first captured.
For end users, the biggest benefit is simplicity. Teams have one place to go for improvement work.
They do not need separate systems for ideas, projects, audits, actions and reporting. They do not need to learn different tools for different types of work. They do not need to copy information between documents, spreadsheets and standalone systems.
Instead, they can use one familiar environment to:
This lowers the barrier to participation.
It also helps improvement work feel more connected. Teams can see how their work fits into wider priorities, collaborate more easily and use the same familiar functionality across different workflows.
For leaders and improvement departments, the biggest benefit is visibility.
When all improvement workflows are managed in one system, it becomes much easier to understand what is happening across the organisation.
Instead of relying on manual updates and siloed data, leaders can view improvement activity and impact across departments, teams, programmes and workflow types. This supports better governance and reporting.
Improvement teams can see where ideas are being generated, which projects are active, where audit actions are overdue, how OKRs are progressing and what impact is being delivered. This creates a more complete picture of improvement than project-only reporting can provide. It also reduces the time spent manually aggregating information for reports and meetings.
Configurable dashboards are one of the ways Simana turns wider workflow coverage into practical visibility. Dashboards can be configured by department, team or programme, and can combine multiple workflow types into a single view.
For example, a departmental dashboard might show:
A programme dashboard might bring together all related projects, quick wins, actions, measures and benefits under one strategic priority. This helps governance meetings focus on evidence rather than manual reporting. It also gives leaders a clearer view of both activity and impact across the full improvement portfolio.
A project repository stores information about improvement work. A standalone tool helps teams complete one specific task. Simana is designed to be broader than both.
By bringing multiple workflows into one collaborative platform, Simana becomes the place where improvement work happens, not just the place where it is recorded.
Ideas can become projects. Audit findings can become actions. OKRs can connect to programmes. Projects can link to measures, charts, PDSA cycles and learning.
Teams, improvement departments and leaders can work from the same shared view of activity and impact. This is what makes Simana different from systems that only manage QI projects or provide isolated improvement tools. It supports the wider improvement ecosystem.
Improvement work is broader than formal QI projects. It includes ideas, quick wins, audits, OKRs, research, improvement plans, programmes and locally defined workflows that reflect the way each organisation improves. Simana brings these workflows together in one platform.
For teams, that means one familiar place to run and track improvement work.
For leaders and improvement departments, it means clearer visibility, stronger governance and more accurate reporting across the full improvement portfolio.
With best practice templates and fully configurable workflows, Simana gives organisations the flexibility to manage improvement work in the way that fits them best.
Whether work starts as a small idea, a quick win, a formal project or a large programme, Simana helps organisations capture it, progress it, govern it and learn from it in one connected improvement workspace.