Using Microsoft Power Apps to speed up and simplify a spreadsheet system

An NHS Service, Lambeth Healthcare is a GP Provider Organisation based in Southeast London, dedicated to working together with GP Practices in Lambeth to provide high quality and compassionate patient care at scale.

The organisation had grown an unmanageable collection of spreadsheets that prevented collaborative working and was not user-friendly. The spreadsheets had slow speeds due to their size and presented a significant risk of data loss from potential deletion or corruption.

The project began with an assessment of the existing spreadsheets and consultation with the client to fully understand the pain points, but also what they ideally wanted the solution to deliver. This allowed us to create a detailed statement of works clearly explaining the deliverables of the project.

The app was then created and populated with test data to check its functionality and review with the client to ensure they were happy. Once testing had been completed, the app was finalised with data migrated and company branding applied to give a polished end product.

The app successfully provided a vastly improved solution to the previous spreadsheet system. In addition to providing a user-friendly and welcoming interface, the app delivered greatly improved functionality. Whereas previously searches and filters had to be manually applied, the app allowed for a search bar to quickly find records. The search function also allowed the client to quickly produce mailing lists from search results.

The app also gave improved security and better auditability, with an activity log to keep records of notes added by users. The solution ultimately gave the client an easy-to-use and scalable app that offered better functionality and reporting to help drive productivity.