translated from Spanish: Apply artificial intelligence to reduce waiting times in hospitals

Decrease patient application, assignment, hospitalization and referral wait time. That is the main objective of the “Intelligent System for the Management of Hospital Beds” (Sigicam), software developed by the academic Carla Taramasco of the School of Computer Civil Engineering of the University of Valparaiso.
The system is already successfully applied at the San José de Copiapó regional hospital, where it has already reduced the waiting time by 40%.  Now the Carlos Van Buren hospital is added in Valparaiso, being the only two national hospitals that have implemented this technology.
In the porteño enclosure, the system will act on the 499 beds enabled in all clinical services, from low complexity to critical units.
The project reduces waiting times in hospitals through intelligent and systematized management of the processes of allocation, conversion of beds and patient transfer. For this, it uses operations research techniques to detect critical constraints and variables that affect management.
Intelligent data management
If a patient could previously be more than forty hours without being hospitalized and without anyone knowing, the system today sends an alert to all involved when the waiting time exceeds twelve hours with information the second.
Taramasco noted that “Sigicam’s goal is to support the entire management process, from the request for the bed in urgency, to its assignment by the management unit, the hospitalization of patients and the time of hospitalization, to the discharge of the patient. We seek to reduce times with a system that supports management, but also delivers information to decision makers.”
The health it expert said monthly assessments were conducted to see the decrease in bed allocation and hospitalization, “working in conjunction with the bed management unit and with the managers, to conduct analysis and evidence of the decrease in time.”
Meanwhile, Eugenio de la Cerda, director of the Valparaiso/San Antonio Health Service explained that “this is a very good tool that will allow the internal management of the hospital to improve waiting times, both for emergency and scheduled patients, together with the possibility of being seen by the managers of the hospital and the network.”
At the same time, Gloria Fuentes, Chief Bed Management Physician at Carlos Van Buren Hospital stated that “it allows to take a leap in health management and management to have an operating system that benefits the management of the global and each of the patients”.
“It allows us to have a computer tool to work in real time according to the global requirements of an adequate and easy-to-use computer system to evaluate not only in the scheduled reports, but to know every day, what is the situation of patients admitted to the hospital,” he added.

Original source in Spanish