ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ is working with software simulation company Simul8 and the Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust on a project aimed at helping to make healthcare processes more efficient.
Since 2022, Bedfordshire hospitals have been using an app called DASHclinic, a queue management tool designed to improve the workflow for both patients and staff. It collects data about patients’ treatment pathways and movement through the various stages of care, helping to identify inefficiencies and bottlenecks in the process that can be addressed to improve scheduling and consequently save time for staff and patients.
Funded by Innovate UK’s Accelerated Knowledge Transfer Scheme, this four-month pilot takes historical data from the DASHclinic app to create a ‘digital shadow’, using AI to automate reading of the data and look for ways to optimise workflow.
This covers everything from looking at work rotas for doctors and nurses, appointment order, scheduling and cancellation and even ways in which equipment use and availability can be monitored to ensure a smoother clinical journey.
“Combining data analytics with operational simulation is a really exciting project” said Maryam Farsi, Lecturer in Through-Life Engineering at ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥. “Using the gathered data we’ll be able to uncover some deep insights into how the current system works and that in conjunction with the simulation will give us the ability to find ways in which the patient flow can be improved.”
This digital shadow could, in future, form the basis for a simulation-powered digital twin which would use real-time data to formulate a virtual version of the current system which would be able to not only help workflow optimisation but also use the gathered data to make predictions about future problems and help to negate them before they happen.
