A busy hospital environment often requires GPs and nurses to diagnose, treat, and provide a comfortable place for patients to recover. A hospital-wide system with complete knowledge of all its patients could provide an optimal ‘global’ solution to busy clinicians.

Patient flow, the ease with which a patient moves throughout the different stages of a medical facility without being subject to or causing delays, has many contributing factors. Current approaches to managing patient flow are often reactive, which can result in suboptimal performance and significant delays in the patient’s care and eventual discharge. This is a particular problem in A&E departments where timescales are shorter and decisions need to be made quickly. This is becoming increasingly important as population growth and ageing impact heavily on patient flow within a hospital.

The technology which has been developed will be instrumental in enabling proactive hospital management of patient care pathways, thereby improving patient flow through the reduction of unnecessary delays and wait times. Predicting admission numbers and likely care pathways for admitted patients allows necessary steps required for the care of these patients to be taken proactively and ahead of time, rather than reactively.

Furthermore, identifying and ranking patients ready to be discharged will provide further utility as it will allow doctors to prioritise the discharge of patients considered most likely ready for discharge, thereby freeing up hospital beds for incoming patients.