Situation
In early 2020, the world was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. Like many other countries, intensive care units in the Netherlands were completely overwhelmed, putting regular healthcare provision under strain. To ensure COVID-19 patients could access care, our client was tasked with overseeing COVID patient distribution amongst hospital ICUs (intensive care units) to ensure capacity limits were respected and occupancy optimized.
In order for the client to get the ICU occupancy insight they needed to achieve optimal patient distribution, a solid data foundation with corresponding data flows and analyses was crucial.
Valcon was asked to play a role in establishing this data foundation and related insights. Based on our expertise and the skilled approach we had demonstrated for another Dutch healthcare client in collaboration with Delta-N, our two companies were asked to join forces once more.
Approach
Due to the COVID-19 crisis situation, there was a lot of pressure to come up with a solution in a short period of time. The situation called for a pragmatic approach with a focus on reliability and scalability towards the future.
Through the collaboration with Delta-N, Valcon had the necessary expertise in cloud architecture, cloud and data engineering, front-end engineering, software development and adoption to help our client put the right solution in place to help it address this critical situation within a very tight timeframe.
Valcon and Delta-N realised that a data platform that met the client’s needs in the short term, would also need to provide the flexibility to scale as the COVID situation evolved and the organisation’s requirements changed.
Using a secure web portal, stakeholders were able to upload information related to hospital capacity and occupation. Through the data platform, the data could be processed quickly, reliably and securely into various data products. These data products were delivered in the form of various plane data sets for analysis purposes and multiple reports to support daily decision-making on both an operational and strategic level. Reports also contained some smart components like forecasts and scenario insights in order to help influence government policy.
Results
- Optimal hospital occupancy: swift and reliable insight into the current situation (occupancy), enabled prompt actions for optimal hospital occupancy. This was crucial, as incorrect movements were undesirable for both the patient and the hospital.
- User-friendly solution: for data provision (web portal) and data consumption (reports). Given the need for rapid and accurate data delivery, a user-friendly solution was imperative.
- Future-proof data foundation: the platform is designed to be scalable and can be utilised for similar situations.
