Chicago-based Rush University Medical Center is working with GE Healthcare Partners to build a command center that will use predictive analytics to manage the flow of patients in the hospital, according to the Chicago Tribune.
GE Healthcare Partners, an advisory firm within GE Healthcare, has already helped Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Hospital launch the Judy Reitz Capacity Command Center, inspired by NASA's Mission Control Center, which combines the latest technology in systems engineering, predictive analytics, experience, volume and patient flow.
GE Healthcare Partners is designing the center, which is expected to open in the fall of 2017, according to the report.
The walls of the command center will be paneled with screens that display data derived from algorithms and predictive analytics. This information will be used to help hospital decision-makers determine where patients will go and when to prevent bottlenecks, delays and other patient flow issues.
The command center will also alert staff of "perfect storm" conditions, according to Jeff Terry, managing principal of GE Healthcare Partners.
"A lot of research shows that errors happen when there's a perfect storm of factors on a unit: Somebody called in sick, it's an inexperienced nursing team, it was a really busy morning. … And so in all that activity, they missed something," Mr. Terry told the Chicago Tribune. "The command center knows that there's an unusually high risk on that unit. It's monitoring those factors of a perfect storm, so that we can send help to that unit and not wait for something to go wrong."
GE developers and engineers based out of Barrington, Ill., will create the algorithms and predictive analytics that will be used in the center, according to the report.