Medical resource optimization during COVID-19 — How Analytics is making the difference
The COVID-19 pandemic confronts state and local health departments, Ministries of Health, and health care providers with unprecedented challenges for predicting medical demand and optimizing health care resources.
Stakeholders are required to quickly understand, measure, then react to the rapidly growing threat to public health and its impact on hospital bed availability, supplies of critical medical resources, and personnel.
In this disruptive and uncertain scenario, analytics is proving to be the best ally for organizations in fighting this invisible enemy. In his article, my colleague Jeff Alford shares four ways people are using analytics to improve responses to the coronavirus outbreak. Medical resource optimization is one of the major areas where amazing results are being achieved every day.
SAS’ medical resource optimization is globally helping communities and Ministries of Health strategically and responsively address their challenges during this pandemic.
Phases of disruption: Respond, recover, reimagine
To help organizations around the world to respond proactively and quickly to the challenges and changes caused by the coronavirus, SAS uses the following approach:
- Respond: Perform rapid data management and analysis to help customers quickly assess and understand the crisis landscape, build situational awareness, and adaptively mitigate disruptions.
- Recover: Assess organizations for changes needed to adapt and modernize operations in the new normal of the business and public sectors.
- Reimagine: Proactively plan for new industries, new operational models, and new personnel to be resilient in confronting future challenges.
A global approach for intensive care unit bed optimization
Italy is my home country so I will start my story there. Doctors and nurses fight against COVID-19 in intensive care units every day. Since March 10th, an average of 2,000 patients each day have been admitted to the intensive care units in Italy. This is an exponential increase compared to previous years. No health care system or government was prepared for a change of this magnitude and quickly responding is crucial for saving lives.
Since the beginning of this crisis, SAS has made it a top priority to help the world get through this pandemic by utilizing analytics and consultants to help hospitals around the world.
Robert Koch Institute
SAS partnered with Robert Koch Institute to predict the expected demand for intensive care beds with ventilators across the country. Government agencies and hospitals were able to adjust the deployment of resources in advance to meet the expected demand.
By collecting and integrating data from all hospitals across the nation, the Health Institute proactively coordinated intensive care so that personnel and resources were available exactly where and when they were needed. An interactive dashboard on the current situation is available in real-time, by tracking patients in ICU beds across the country from multiple provider locations and using an integrated alert system for supply monitoring to facilitate strategic planning of healthcare staff and supplies.
Cleveland Clinic
In the United States, Cleveland Clinic and SAS created innovative models to help hospitals forecast patient volume, bed capacity, ventilator availability, and more. The models, which are freely available on GitHub, provide timely, reliable information for hospitals and health departments to optimize healthcare delivery for patients. They also predict the impact on the supply chain, finance, and other critical areas.
Policlinico Gemelli
In Rome, the Policlinico Gemelli hospital’s Information System was able to respond to urgent requests from these services and departments involved in the COVID-19 emergency:
- the emergency sector to predict the short-term impact on the number of cases
- the intensive care units to analyze the diagnostic/therapeutic information collected from medical records
- the management control for reporting and optimal allocation of resources involved in COVID-19 cases
- the research, to prepare the computational analysis tools with AI algorithms to look for a long-term response to the pandemic
“With new insights provided by SAS analytics, Policlinico Gemelli has tried to better plan the management of resources in the short and medium-term”, says Paolo Sergi, Director of Information System at Gemelli. “Moving forward, we are collaborating on project Generator — Info Science Center of Gemelli to improve our overall response to the disease. In this project, we are trying to predict medical complications in infected patients and predict the length of hospitalization. With additional insights, we can provide personalized paths for each patient as they recover from COVID-19.”
These are examples of how analytics and passionate consultants can positively impact society as a whole. It addresses one of our biggest fears during this time — loved ones not getting proper treatment should they fall severely ill.
Let SAS empower you with the latest statistics about COVID-19. Gain insights from our visualizations of cases and trends, by accessing the COVID-19 Data Analytics Resource Hub.
Read more about medical resource optimization in this solution brief.
