Innovation Tackles the Virus

They were ahead of their time. A small group of IT spe­cial­ists, design­ers, stu­dents, and founders took three days out of their nor­mal rou­tines for an intense round of dis­cus­sions and pro­gram­ming, hard­ly both­er­ing to sleep. Togeth­er they came up with the idea for an app that could make many peo­ple safer dur­ing an epi­dem­ic. This app allows med­ical appoint­ments to be orga­nized so as to limit the time spent in wait­ing rooms—and thus the time that patients spend in close prox­im­i­ty to other peo­ple. The idea was tai­lor-made for the chal­lenges that arrived with the corona­virus. Yet it was devel­oped in Sep­tem­ber 2019, months before the virus appeared on the scene. 

The app was the brain­child of par­tic­i­pants in a hack­athon in Munich. Hun­dreds of tal­ent­ed young peo­ple gath­ered there to seek solu­tions to prob­lems posed by a num­ber of com­pa­nies. The task of “doing away with wait­ing rooms” came from GE Health­care. This sub­sidiary of the U.S.-based Gen­er­al Elec­tric cor­po­ra­tion has been plac­ing an ever-greater empha­sis on pro­mot­ing the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion in health­care, and the app is just one exam­ple of how that strat­e­gy can pay off in the pan­dem­ic. 

With around 50,000 employ­ees at loca­tions in more than 160 coun­tries, GE Health­care devel­ops tech­ni­cal solu­tions and ser­vices for the health­care sec­tor. “There is a huge demand for dig­i­tal inno­va­tions in this indus­try,” says Jan Beger, Gen­er­al Man­ag­er Dig­i­tal at GE Health­care. “We’re now in a posi­tion to offer a wide range of solu­tions. The Covid-19 cri­sis has shown that dig­i­tal solu­tions pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits to health­care sys­tems in an epi­dem­ic.” That’s because many dig­i­tal inno­va­tions offer not only greater con­ve­nience and effi­cien­cy, but also help to pro­tect doc­tors and patients—because they can reduce the amount of phys­i­cal con­tact. 

Some solu­tions apply pri­mar­i­ly to med­ical per­son­nel, such as the abil­i­ty to exam­ine radi­o­log­i­cal results remote­ly. For exam­ple, CT scans can be trans­ferred dig­i­tal­ly from one med­ical depart­ment to anoth­er—or from one hos­pi­tal to anoth­er. Doc­tors no longer have to hold a phys­i­cal copy of a scan or a com­pact disc with the data in their hands. “The great thing about our solu­tion is that it’s com­pat­i­ble with near­ly all of the sys­tems used by hos­pi­tals,” says Math­ias Goyen, Chief Med­ical Offi­cer at GE Health­care. “If radi­ol­o­gists have a high-res­o­lu­tion screen at their home, they can eas­i­ly do their diag­nos­tic work there.” Tele­work for hos­pi­tal physi­cians. Some med­ical cen­ters have already been very suc­cess­ful at using such means to deal with the restric­tions regard­ing con­tact. 

Anoth­er extreme­ly impor­tant issue dur­ing an epi­dem­ic is that of ICU capac­i­ties. Thus far, only the per­son­nel at the units them­selves have known how many beds are occu­pied and for how long. “When doc­tors need a bed, they usu­al­ly call up the nurs­es’ sta­tion and ask,” says Goyen, who is also a pro­fes­sor of diag­nos­tic radi­ol­o­gy at Ham­burg Uni­ver­si­ty. Even if hos­pi­tals make capac­i­ty data avail­able, key details are often miss­ing, such as whether beds are reserved for peo­ple sched­uled to arrive the next day, or whether patients have been dis­charged ear­li­er than orig­i­nal­ly planned.  

GE Healthcare’s Com­mand Cen­ter sys­tem eval­u­ates all of this infor­ma­tion auto­mat­i­cal­ly. “It’s sim­i­lar to the com­mand cen­ter for a NASA mis­sion, and it’s an opti­mal way to con­trol patient flows,” says Goyen. Imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the out­break of the pan­dem­ic in Ger­many, GE Health­care adapt­ed a ver­sion of the soft­ware for the Covid-19 sit­u­a­tion. With­in two weeks, it was com­pat­i­ble with vir­tu­al­ly all hos­pi­tal inter­faces. Not only that—it could be installed entire­ly remote­ly, so there was no need for com­put­er tech­ni­cians to actu­al­ly enter the facil­i­ties. In just four weeks, more than 150 clients world­wide were using the sys­tem. It not only helps treat patients more prompt­ly, but also pro­tects nurs­es and doctors—and there­by the patients as well. “A cru­cial part of keep­ing a health­care sys­tem in good shape is mak­ing sure that its per­son­nel remain healthy,” observes Goyen. 

GE Health­care is also devel­op­ing ever more dig­i­tal solu­tions that pri­or­i­tize direct ben­e­fits for patients. “Patients have far too rarely been viewed as cus­tomers with the asso­ci­at­ed needs. Health­care has been lag­ging behind other sec­tors in this regard,” says Goyen. “Dig­i­tal­iza­tion offers a prime oppor­tu­ni­ty to change this in a lot of areas.” For exam­ple, patients are cur­rent­ly hand­ed a num­ber of dense­ly writ­ten doc­u­ments in prepa­ra­tion for com­plex treat­ments. But chat­bots could take on the job of pro­vid­ing detailed infor­ma­tion about the pro­ce­dures. These dig­i­tal assis­tants could also remind patients about dietary restric­tions before cer­tain appoint­ments. Goyen sees a shift in the atti­tudes of physi­cians as well. “The physi­cian-patient rela­tion­ship is chang­ing,” he notes. “Patients are becom­ing more sophis­ti­cat­ed. They’re using rat­ing por­tals, for exam­ple, to gath­er pre­cise infor­ma­tion and choose exact­ly the right physi­cians for their needs.” Hos­pi­tals and med­ical offices should make use of this oppor­tu­ni­ty to become more cus­tomer-ori­ent­ed and there­by acquire a com­pet­i­tive edge. “We make prod­ucts for doc­tors, but ulti­mate­ly these prod­ucts should always serve the patients.”  

That is the case with the wait­ing room app con­ceived at the hackathon in Munich. It is intend­ed to allow patients to send data to med­ical offices before their appoint­ments, or to be noti­fied in real time of delays. The app could com­ple­ment a prod­uct that GE Health­care has already devel­oped: its Smart Sched­ul­ing app. This sys­tem con­sid­ers mul­ti­ple fac­tors that influ­ence whether patients will keep their appoint­ments, such as: How far does the patient live from the doctor’s office? What weath­er con­di­tions are fore­cast for the day? Has the patient can­celed appoint­ments at par­tic­u­lar times of the day before? An algo­rithm gen­er­ates dates and times that match the patient’s pref­er­ences. This improves doc­tors’ abil­i­ties to plan—and also helps ensure that wait­ing rooms are less crowd­ed. The app is expect­ed to be used for the first time at doc­tors’ offices this sum­mer. Sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed wait­ing rooms then will not only help patients feel more relaxed, but also pro­tect their health. 

“If the pan­dem­ic had bro­ken out two years ear­li­er, the sit­u­a­tion would have been much more chal­leng­ing,” says Beger. “The past sev­er­al weeks have shown that there are a lot of oppor­tu­ni­ties to be had from dig­i­tal­iz­ing health­care. That gives me hope for the future.” The corona­virus, he says, is help­ing to accel­er­ate these devel­op­ments.