System and uses this to forecast admissions and discharges. Dashboards visualise this data so managers can see actual demand, historical demand and predicted demand. “This supports users in their decision making, using real- time dashboards to plan for the future,”Whittington says. “The algorithm is always learning because of the process we have built around it to retrain when it drifts, and we are always checking how the model performed compared to what actually happened.” Informing the future Forecasting data allows the Command Centre to be more responsive to staffing and resource needs on the ground. Cartwright sends morning emails, highlighting key priorities and what they are anticipating through the doors. This allows staff to take preliminary action, such as review their rosters, use satellite hospital capacity or consider the virtual care option, Hospital in the Home. “It allows services to plan and move things around if needed,” explains Cartwright. “For example if we are expecting lots of vascular surgery patients they will need ICU capacity and a certain number of minutes of acute theatre time, but they can’t start surgery until an ICU bed is available,” he explains.
“It makes a real impact as sometimes the algorithm has forecast a bad day, but we did some escalation that encouraged more discharges and were able to cope with the demand. “We wouldn’t be able to do that without really easy access to good information and the staff trusting the data,” he says. Empowering and adding value Joan Lau,TeWhatu Ora Counties Manukau Advanced Analytics Manager, says everyone in the organisation sees the same information, from a nurse working on the floor up to a general manager.
“This supports users in their decision making , using real-time dashboards to plan for the future.”
She describes how in the past, “analytics was something we had to do for reporting”. “It wasn’t adding value, but we realised it’s really about
Rosie Whittington, Te Whatu Ora Counties Manukau, Health Intelligence Manager
empowerment and the arrival of Covid-19 really showed how powerful that can be,” she says. Use of data during the pandemic response elevated awareness and understanding of the power of data, from the coalface all the way up to executive levels of the health system. Kirstine Kent, Service Manager at Te Whatu Ora Counties Manukau, describes how the hospital has spent a lot of time developing its dashboards, which are “tailor made for us and how we work and how we think”. “Without these dashboards, we would have to send people out to do manual counts. Instead, we have
HEALTHCARE ANALYTICS IN AOTEAROA NEW ZEALAND | A HINZ SPECIAL REPORT | 13
Powered by FlippingBook