The Heartbeat of Hospital Operations

Time is of the essence for all hospital operations, especially in unprecedented times.

In the face of the pandemic, the urgency to best allocate the resources, the importance of optimising a seamless workflow and the need to make fast, sharp decisions are more critical than ever to continue delivering the best patient care.

The concept of a Command, Control and Communications (C3) system was thus conceived in TTSH to allow better communication and coordination of responses in a timely manner. It optimises the hospital operations and allows the hospital to run like clockwork, enabling healthcare professionals to have a detailed view of the hospital’s resources, giving actionable insights.

The importance of hospital command centre

The TTSH Operations Command Centre (TTSH OCC) forms the heart of hospital operations.

This intelligent and intuitive system provides a complete visualisation of what is happening on the ground, especially patient movement, to ensure that there are enough resources, such as beds, medical supplies and equipment to cater to their needs. Every patient’s needs are unique, and it is essential to understand the requirements to ensure proper care is administered throughout the patients’ journey, making it a seamless and structured process. 

Having information at the fingertips is crucial to facilitate efficiency on the ground. With the patients’ lives at stake, the C3 system is designed to reinforce and optimise hospital operations. This is integral to minimise the wait time yet maximise the resources to cater to varied scenarios. Harnessing a holistic visualisation of resource utilisation across the hospital enables rapid activation and deployment of resources when needed to mitigate bottlenecks. The C3 system helps to gather data, make sense of it and provide recommended actions to tackle any medical emergencies.

The C3 system is a system-of-systems: encapsulating a network of smart sensors, analytics and AI integrated applications to bring about optimal patient care and delivery. It provides Management with the visibility of an end-to-end journey of the patient, where the choke points are, and what resources we can call upon to alleviate the ground situation.

The Operations Command Centre acts as the core of the hospital and forms the baseline of hospital operations. To deliver the best care to patients means that the system must have the capability to gather and process comprehensive data to realise high data accuracy, leading to meaningful insights derived, helps advance the precision in resources allocation.

At the same time, a well-thought-out C3 system that allows automation of patient, bed and asset workflows, the patient care experience is elevated. Hospital staff will be able to place patients’ needs first and focus on their road to recovery. For instance, only two to three people are now needed to focus on the allocation of 2,000 beds across TTSH-NCID¹. Similarly, because of the use of technology, manual administrative work is reduced for nurses, and allow them to focus on caring of the patients.

Elevating the command centre with advancement in technology

Constant innovation and improvement are vital to keep hospital operations running like clockwork. Keeping pace with potential technology enhancements to catalyse operations and reinforce patient care is paramount. This is evident with healthcare spending expected to rise at a CAGR of 4% over 2020 to 2024, up from 2.8% in 2015 to 2019².

Sensors will have to be installed in various areas of the hospital to gather as much data as possible and have it connected to the command centre. With more data, new insights can be achieved, and necessary alerts triggered when there are anomalies detected, prompting immediate attention.

The integration of AI and autonomous management into the command centre is also an essential piece – harnessing machine learning to generate useful propositions and incorporating automation to shorten existing processes. Having analytics engines integrated with the command centre also unlocks agility in decision making as it provides visibility of the now and recommendations of the future. It empowers hospital management to have a complete picture of the current situation and control what may entail in time to come, bolstering ahead with predictability.

Especially during unprecedented times like how COVID-19 has struck the world, the call to be prepared for what is next is crucial. We need to be able to act ahead of situations and be proactive rather than reactive, and implementing digital technology is of the essence to assist hospital operations to make sharp and rapid decisions when we are faced with a time pressure.

The C3 development is a continuous improvement journey. We learnt along the way, and we will have to continue to learn and be nimble enough to adapt with each step of the journey.

Backed with a robust C3 system co-developed together with ST Engineering and Integrated Health Information Systems, we will be prepared for any crisis that come our way and execute decisive protocols in a heartbeat.

Watch how we manage the COVID-19 pandemic at Tan Tock Seng Hospital:

¹ https://govinsider.asia/smart-gov/ihis-tan-tock-seng-hospital-national-centre-for-infectious-disease-exclusive-inside-singapores-covid-control-centre/

² Deloitte 2021 Global Health Care Outlook