Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) is one of the busiest hospitals in Hong Kong, with hundreds of admissions and discharges every day. Maintaining sufficient bed capacity is always a challenge in the context of escalating service demand due to ageing of the population, especially during the winter period, when access block at the Accident and Emergency Department is not uncommon.
To tackle these long-standing challenges, QEH, as one of the pilot hospitals in the Hospital Authority to pursue Smart Hospital initiatives, established a Hospital Command Centre (HCC) in October 2020 under the leadership of the Head Office Information Technology and Health Informatics Division (IT&HID) and supported by the Cluster Information Technology Division (KCCIT). The HCC aims to improve the efficiency and quality of patient management by integrating real-time patient-related and logistic data to facilitate patient management and expedite bed turnover. A co-delivery approach was adopted with the involvement of user departments, Administrative Services, KCCIT and IT&HID to develop the system algorithm for linking data and embodying features of various corporate systems to facilitate the operation of the HCC. During the COVID-19 pandemic, building on the foundation of the HCC, a COVID-19 Command Centre Module was quickly set up to manage the frequent flow of COVID-19 patients among various facilities both within and between hospitals by optimising the use of real-time bed statistics, clinical information and resources available.
Looking into the future, AI prediction and Cluster Command Centre are being developed to improve patient management and speed up hospital discharges.
