The Workforce Journey: What Is New, What Is Coming and Why It Matters for Every User
The RLDatix workforce suite now reaches 1.8 million users, but the product journey is about more than volume. In this keynote from the Connected Health & Care Summit 2026, Jess Beardmore, Head of Product at RLDatix, walks through the full workforce journey, from Loop Engage and Loop Locate through to SafeCare, eCommunity, Optima and Pulse. Covering what is available now, what is in development and what is coming next, the session connects each product to the day-to-day reality of the people who use them.
Watch Jess Beardmore walk through the full RLDatix workforce product suite, covering Loop, Optima, SafeCare, eCommunity, Pulse and AI, with live product roadmaps and early adopter results.
What the session covers and the headline numbers
This keynote covers every major workforce product in the RLDatix suite, framed around the user journey from arriving at work through to operational decision-making and intelligence. The headline numbers were:
- 1.8 million Loop users, with App Store ratings of 4.5 on Apple and 4.7 on Play Store, outperforming LinkedIn and on par with Microsoft
- Loop Locate eliminates physical time clocks and auto-finalises rosters, removing the payroll lockdown chase
- Ask Optima is live in version 12.0.4, delivering AI-powered step-by-step guidance that improves without requiring an upgrade
- SafeCare is being extended beyond acute nursing to work for every clinician in every setting, using the SafeCare UI on top of the Optima engine
- Pulse early adopter data shows 68% of units breached at least one metric for more than one week, and 50% of repeat breaches had the same root cause
- An AI-based auto-scheduler for community rostering achieved over 80% roster fulfilment in testing
The products, what they do and what is changing
Jess Beardmore structures the session around the workforce journey. Loop Engage is the communications platform, now stable enough to operate during Optima upgrades, with a new Communication Intelligence Platform in development to show how far messages reach. Loop Locate replaces hardware time clocks with geo-fencing, updates SafeCare automatically and auto-finalises rosters. Loop Rewards, delivered through Stream, gives staff free access to personalised discounts including supermarkets.
On the operational side, SafeCare has been refreshed and is being extended to work beyond acute nursing, with the aim of supporting a wider range of clinical settings and opening the Optima engine with SafeCare’s simpler interface. eCommunity handles patient-led scheduling for community services and is being moved into Loop, with an AI auto-scheduler already tested. Optima now includes Day View for hourly demand breakdowns, copy and paste for duties, and Ask Optima for AI-powered self-help. Pulse, working with 15 early adopter customers, proactively identifies units breaching metrics and surfaces the root cause before the problem escalates.
What this means in practice and who it is relevant to
The session consistently returns to the reality of the people using these products. Jess Beardmore demonstrates Loop’s screen reader accessibility, noting that 6% of the NHS workforce has declared disability needs and many more have accessibility requirements beyond those who declare. She highlights that passwordless login via biometrics is coming in October, removing one of the most common friction points.
On culture, a hackathon innovation project is building culture metrics into Loop. Jess Beardmore poses the question: what if you have three identical units in the same specialty, but bank staff refuse to work in one of them? The culture intelligence platform aims to answer the why behind that pattern. She also challenges the sector’s focus on red flags and incidents, asking how organisations identify and replicate what the best-performing units are doing differently.
The Menopause Charity partnership, reaching 70% of the NHS workforce who are female, is framed not as a campaign but as a direct response to the reality that clinicians dealing with brain fog are still expected to deliver high-stakes care without support.
This session is relevant to rostering teams, workforce leads, SafeCare users, Loop administrators, community service managers, HR teams, finance leads, and anyone responsible for workforce technology, staff engagement or operational planning across health and social care.
Frequently asked questions
Who presents this session?
The session is presented by Jess Beardmore, Head of Product at RLDatix. She covers the full workforce product suite, framing each product around the user journey from arriving at work to operational decision-making. The session includes live product roadmaps, early adopter results and signposts to deeper dive sessions across the summit.
What is Loop Engage and what is new?
Loop Engage is the communications module within Loop, allowing organisations to send messages, polls and surveys to staff. It now includes a reply-to function developed with Swansea Bay’s anaesthetics team. A Communication Intelligence Platform is in development, giving administrators analytics on reach, clicks, comments and engagement speed. RLDatix also plans to use the platform to communicate directly with Loop users about opportunities such as early access programmes and events.
What is Loop Locate and how does it replace time clocks?
Loop Locate is a hardware-less time and attendance module that uses geo-fencing through the Loop app. It is designed to eliminate the need for physical time clocks, fingerprint scanners and the infrastructure that supports them. It automatically updates SafeCare to confirm staff are on site, and it auto-finalises rosters, removing the need to chase managers for payroll lockdown. Coming features include saved locations and segmentation by staff type.
What is Ask Optima?
Ask Optima is an AI-powered assistant built into Optima version 12.0.4. It draws on all Optima documentation, user guides and portal content to answer questions in seconds with step-by-step guidance. It detects when users ask off-topic questions. User feedback goes directly into the analytical model, improving accuracy without requiring an Optima upgrade. Shrewsbury described switching it on as “like Christmas.”
What did the Pulse early adopter programme find?
68% of early adopter units breached at least one metric for more than one week. 50% of repeat breaches had the same root cause, meaning half could have been prevented if the first instance had been acted on. Pulse proactively identifies these breaches, surfaces the root cause and sends tailored notifications with suggestions. It is currently working with 15 early adopter customers.
What is the AI auto-scheduler for community rostering?
Community rostering is patient-led scheduling, matching care needs, geographical location, timing and staff attributes. An AI-based auto-scheduler was developed during an innovation hackathon and tested with real and dummy data. It achieved over 80% roster fulfilment, which Jess Beardmore notes some organisations cannot achieve manually. The approach starts with the most complex scheduling problem, community, with the intention of cascading the capability across the wider suite.
What accessibility features does Loop have?
Loop supports screen readers, meaning users with visual impairments can navigate the app, request shifts and confirm bookings independently. Jess Beardmore demonstrates this live in the session. She notes that 6% of the NHS workforce has declared disability needs, with many more having undeclared accessibility requirements. Passwordless login via biometrics is coming in October to further reduce friction.
