# IMECore against a spreadsheet and an inbox

> This is the real competitor. Almost every coordination firm runs on a tracker, a shared drive, and somebody's memory.

Source: https://imecore.com/compare/imecore-vs-spreadsheets

## A spreadsheet cannot tell you what it does not know

The tracker holds what someone typed into it. It does not know that the imaging centre never sent the films, that the examiner emailed a question on Friday, or that the report is now four days from a hearing. Every one of those facts lives in a person's head or a mailbox.

- Two people edit the tracker and one version wins silently.
- The status column is right on the day it was typed.
- Nobody can reconstruct which records the examiner received.
- A cell holds a claim number and a diagnosis, in a file on a laptop.
- The person who knows the file goes on leave.

## What IMECore does about it

### The case updates itself

Status comes from what happened, not from what someone remembered to type.

### Records are attached, not linked

Every page sits on the case with its source and date. No shared drive to search.

### An audit trail you did not have to keep

Who did what, and when. Export it when counsel asks.

### Access by role, not by trust

The examiner sees the records. The employer sees restrictions. The tracker cannot do that.

### Health data out of a laptop

Case data lives in Canada under access control, not in a file called tracker_final_v3.

### The knowledge survives the person

A coordinator can hand over a file without a two-hour conversation.

## Questions people ask

### At what point does a spreadsheet stop working?

Usually at the second coordinator, or the first disclosure request. One person tracking twenty cases can hold it in their head. Two people sharing a file cannot, and neither can answer what the examiner had on a given date.

### Can we import our existing tracker?

Yes. Send the sheet and we map the columns onto cases. History comes across as a starting state, not as invented audit entries.

### Is a spreadsheet a privacy problem?

It can be. A tracker with claimant names and claim numbers is personal information. Under BC PIPA and PIPEDA you have to know where it is, who opened it, and when it is deleted. A file on a laptop answers none of those.

### We already use a shared drive. Is that not the same?

A shared drive stores documents. It does not know which of them the examiner received, which source is still outstanding, or which version of the report was released.