Artificial Intelligence in hospital emergency rooms to improve patient care

October 23, 2023

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is here to stay and the healthcare field has found an ally in this technology. Not only for the detection of different types of cancers or in the diagnosis of diseases.

AI has also arrived in the Emergency Department, where it has helped to streamline routines, automate processes, and anticipate patient flows.

The Hospital Universitario 12 de Octubre (Madrid) alone attended 257,308 people in 2019 in the emergency department, of whom 10% were admitted. In other words, the emergency area of a hospital is one of the most demanded and where timing is a vital aspect in human terms.

However, it is one of the healthcare areas where health professionals are constantly faced with delays in patient care, saturation of the service, limited resources, etc. This results in dissatisfied patients and stressed workers..

The technological solution of Telefónica Tech and 3M

Telefónica Tech and 3M Health Information System (HIS), a leading multinational company in solutions for the healthcare sector, have launched a pioneering technological solution with predictive capacity, using artificial intelligence, aimed at optimizing the planning and management of Hospital Emergency Service resources in the Spanish market in order to improve the provision of services.

The differential value of this solution is that it has been created jointly by a team of health and advanced analytics professionals specialized in the emergency service. It is the only one that includes predictive capabilities.

"This pioneering initiative allows emergency healthcare professionals to make better decisions and even predict the future needs of the service, thanks to the application of artificial intelligence. This will undoubtedly result in better patient care," explains Carlos Martínez Miguel, director of Solutions and Services at Telefónica Tech.

'360 Platform' to manage the emergency service

The solution offers a complete view of emergency department operations, integrating different key indicators (occupancy, activity, pathologies, procedures, etc.), so that healthcare professionals can speed up data-driven decision-making and develop better planning. This is especially true given that each patient who comes to the emergency department of a hospital has totally different peculiarities. This is where AI is able to establish patterns of action.

A scorecard, 'Platform 360', collects important information on each emergency department visit. In addition to a series of indicators so that they can be visually consulted from any point and device.

The integrated indicators are:

Records and daily activity.
Detailed analysis of demand.
Study of patients by typology (hyperfrequency, Covid-19, flu, etc.).
Daily visits.
Quality and data control.

In addition to all this information, the solution incorporates a module that shows the prediction of daily visits to the emergency department one week in advance in order to improve waiting times and optimize the sizing of the service. In addition to anticipating possible admissions in order to optimize the human and material resources of the hospitals.

AI Suite to facilitate access to Artificial Intelligence

To the above solution must be added Telefónica Tech's AI Suite tool, a non-code platform for automating machine learning processes that democratizes access to AI, making it easier for each hospital to develop its own analytical models without being data experts.

This initiative can improve the planning of each week's staffing, according to the hospital's needs. This is achieved through historical and daily activity status, a prediction of daily service pressure, and a complete analysis of demand and patients by pathology.

Some of the advantages that AI will provide in hospital emergency departments are better coordination of the service to avoid delays in patient care due to a lack of healthcare personnel; the organization of potential referrals to other hospitals in the event of excessive demand; improved planning and staff dedication by knowing in advance the possible peaks of activity; and a more efficient use of resources.