This pandemic has made the entire world stand on its toes. Even a single misinterpretation or misinformation may lead to disaster, which won’t be easily recoverable. The doctors and analysts are toiling hard to identify and cure each and every patient. As the number of COVID-19 cases approaches a peak in the United States and other countries, hospitals around the world are bracing for significant surges in patients. We won’t show any disagreement that large-scale epidemiological models are proving to be a crucial tool for governments to control the spread of the novel coronavirus. However, it should be noted that these tools do not provide precise projections for local hospitals—each with different needs and capacities—to get ready.
Hospitals running on scarce data are just magnifying the vulnerability of such institutes, which won’t bear the desirable results. James C. Benneyan, who directs Northeastern University’s Healthcare Systems Engineering Institute, opined that all of those models aren’t helping an individual hospital address day-to-day questions. There’s still a mystery on how many patients to be in ICU or isolated beds and how and why they are to be shifted. Benneyan, who is also a professor of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, developed a modeling tool, in a partnership with the Lahey Hospital and Medical Center, to answer those questions.
The model won’t only help hospitals produce their projections; it will also assist them in considering possible shortage scenarios up to 30 days in advance, as they prepare for potential waves of patients that could strain their facilities. Hospitals can run the tool with data specific to their facilities to project when the demand for hospital equipment is going to exceed the supply. It can also model the availability of hospital staff, Benneyan says, with the idea of helping health systems that have no idea about what’s coming their way.
Harminder Singh