Due to the significant amount of data flowing through a healthcare facility, manual interpretation of the data to determine possible anomalous or outlier events is humanly impossible. By collecting and interpreting such data, a software system can detect anomalous events, such as fever, etc., that may require attention by one or more caregivers. Once an event is detected, the appropriate personnel must be notified of the event for remedial actions to be taken. Because modern caregiving is both a group and specialized activity with many parties that may be ‘on’ or ‘off’ call at the time of the event, determining the appropriate personnel to address the event is a challenge. Once the persons are identified, they need to collaborate to resolve the event. Electronic tools that deliver sufficient information and provide the means of resolution for the event must be made available to the identified group of caregivers so that they can resolve the issue in a timely fashion.
Existing solutions have attempted to address the different facets of the problem separately. Electronic tools are available to identify potential events. However, these identification tools tend to cast a wide net, or have decision criteria that are insufficiently specific, leading to identification of events that may not be relevant to a particular patient. When an event is identified, the task of identifying whether the occurrence of the event requires remediation or treatment is typically manual. The person identifying the event may call around to determine the appropriate primary caregiver to address the event. It becomes the primary caregiver's responsibility to interact with other caregivers associated with patient to determine the best course of action to resolve the event. This interaction is also manual and may involve phone calls, paging, text messaging, email or face-to-face conversations.
Advances in information technology continue to bring challenges to healthcare management. Consequently, there is always room for innovations and improvements.