About Boole
Named after a logician.
Founded on a discovery.
Boole exists because the standard assumption, that performance failure means insufficient capacity, is wrong in most of the systems that matter most.
How Boole began
Our origin was a discovery while applying queueing theory and system dynamics to model the capacity required to meet performance standards. Testing nationally recognised, best-practice healthcare pathways, we found something unexpected: for many of them, no amount of additional capacity produced sustainable compliant performance. The constraint was not the level of resource. It was that the pathway logic itself made the required standard structurally impossible to achieve.
Most organisations, and most improvement frameworks, assume performance failure means insufficient capacity, poor management, or inadequate effort from frontline staff. What we found was that many systems are operating at or very near their mathematical limits, constrained not by what they have, but by how their rules invisibly interact. And often, small changes to those rules, ones that preserve governance and safety, are enough to make the required standard achievable using the capacity already in the system, sometimes less.
Boole is named after George Boole, the Victorian mathematician and logician born in Lincoln. Based in Lincolnshire, Boole has long been an intellectual touchstone and inspiration. The company takes his name as a commitment: that what is built here makes a meaningful difference: an honour to his legacy, not an embarrassment to it. Boole was founded to bring that lens, the translation of system policies into verifiable logic, to the organisations that need it most.
What we believe
Performance issues are often due to invisible policy interactions
In most failing systems, the binding constraint is not resource. It is the invisible complex interaction of rules that govern the system: rules that, in combination, can make performance targets structurally infeasible regardless of how much capacity is added. Whilst standard performance improvement tools and methods cannot see this. Logic based analysis can.
Proof before commitment
Leaders making decisions about complex pathways deserve proven analysis of impact before they commit. The question is not "do we have a plan?" but "can this plan work?" Trial and error with complex systems is expensive, high risk, and avoidable. Proof is a founding principle of how Boole works, and it governs how we develop our tools and engage with clients.
Scale is the obligation
The methods that make invisible constraints visible are currently intensive and expert-dependent. Boole's long-term purpose is to make them accessible, across all complex systems, not limited to academic journals and research institutions.
How we work
One method, regardless of context. The same five-stage process whether we are modelling a single ward rota or a regional acute network. Every engagement builds and validates a logic twin: a computational model of the pathway's rules, policies, and flow. This is what makes the verdict evidence-grade rather than advisory.
1. Baseline
Data extraction and statistical fitting from activity, flow, and demand records. On-site observation to discover the real logic of the pathway, including informal workarounds, escalation conventions, and cultural decision patterns that data alone does not surface. The baseline establishes what the pathway is actually doing, as distinct from what its documentation says it does.
2. Model
Building the logic twin: a validated computational model of the pathway's rules, policies, and flow interactions. The logic twin is validated against real historical data and pathway flow examples, not against averages. This is the foundation on which all subsequent analysis rests.
3. Optimise
Stress-testing thousands of configurations against the logic twin. Generating a set of distinct options, each with calculated operational impact, capacity buffers, and cost. Translating outputs into decision-ready formats for executive and operational audiences. The analysis is always tied to a specific decision, not produced as a general report.
4. Assure
Full formal reporting: the feasibility verdict, the evidence portfolio, and the assurance dossier. Includes everything the organisation needs for internal governance sign-off, CQC scrutiny, and NHS England submission. The Pathway Feasibility Certificate, where issued, is produced at this stage.
5. Monitor
A lightweight dashboard connected to the trust data warehouse. Tracks the critical flow variables identified in the logic twin. Alerts operational teams when real-world metrics begin to drift toward structurally infeasible territory, before performance deteriorates visibly in reported data.
Team
Boole is a small team of mathematicians, developers, clinicians, and operations specialists. We are growing, and always interested in hearing from talented people who share our mission. If that is you, please get in touch.
Thomas Ridgeway
Founder
Thomas' experience includes a decade as a senior NHS operations manager before founding Public View, an NHS benchmarking and data analysis platform that has been used by more than half of all NHS organisations.
He holds an Executive MBA with Distinction from the University of Oxford, and serves as an Adjunct Lecturer in Economics and Operations Management for George Washington University.