2022 Interns work on improving patient flow in a hospital setting

Our six interns, Dhylan, Emma, Sreedda, Zoe, Elise and William, and two fellows, Noo and Fred, spent 8 weeks this summer working on solutions aimed at improving patient flow in hospitals.  

During the first few weeks they focused on one aspect of patient flow: capturing bed occupancy from hospital wards and finding solutions to improve the current system. This incorporated research into RFID Tagging, IR sensors, QR codes, Wifi and Bluetooth tracking. 

During the third week of their internship, they visited Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge. They had the chance to talk to nurses, doctors, porters, and bed managers about their ideas and solutions on how to optimise patient flow and bed occupancy. They observed how many hospital beds were occupied by patients who were clinically fit to leave the hospital but were waiting on administrative tasks and/or prescriptions to be complete, keeping patients who needed a bed waiting. They also learned about the dissatisfaction and frustration felt by patients and visitors by the lack of updates. One factor that causes this is the lack of communication and information ranging from the waiting time for surgery to that of being discharged from hospital. The interns decided to focus on the discharge process, making information regarding the different stages of it available to patients.

By the end of the 8 weeks with HDI they had conceived and developed the idea of ‘Patientsight’ – an interface to be viewed on mobiles, desktops or on a screen on the wall of a hospital ward that provides patients and staff with real-time information on the status of each stage of the hospital discharge process.