MediShout: Digital Technology And Artificial-Intelligence (AI) To Help Hospitals and GP Practices Prevent and Manage Covid-19

Healthcare staff are battling Covid-19 on the frontline and they need functioning equipment, logistics and infrastructure to treat patients. They need ventilators to give oxygen, stock to take blood tests, deep-cleans, and personal-protective equipment (PPE), both to protect themselves and their patients, and to prevent the spread of infection. However, with hospitals and GP practices in crisis-mode, responses are understandably un-coordinated. Staff see all the problems but their voices are not heard. There are no quick or simple ways for staff to report the problems they see which means their insights are lost forever. Without this crucial data, healthcare organisations cannot swiftly fix issues to ensure staff are best equipped to treat patients.

This project will develop healthcare's first mobile phone App for front-line staff to instantly report any Covid-19 logistical issue to managers, helpdesks or equipment suppliers who can resolve the problems. For example, if staff report a lack of PPE and the level of urgency, this can help the hospitals and equipment suppliers allocate resources to where they're needed most. With the situation on the front-line changing so rapidly, our platform harnesses the insights of staff in real-time so hospitals and GP practices can adjust to the evolving situation.

A core reason for this project being so innovative is what it does with the collected data. Firstly, having all issues reported through one portal means information will be stored in a single, structured data-base. This not only allows short-term resolution of issues but will drive longer-term improvement to healthcare. The lessons learned will help healthcare better prepare for future waves of Covid-19, or new pandemics occurring secondary to other viruses. Aggregating structured-data will also result in the ability to use artificial-intelligence capabilities to predict future events. For example, the project will aim to predict when medical equipment will break or help understand where PPE will be most needed.

This project will offer a fantastic return on investment. The strong project team have a superb track record of delivering meaningful digital health solutions to organisations across the world. They will use their in-depth knowledge of healthcare, with the support of several NHS organisations, to deliver a high-impact solution that can be scaled quickly during this project. It will better protect NHS staff, it will ensure that healthcare systems function more efficiently, and it will save lives; these are benefits that far outweigh the value of grant funding requested.

---ADDITIONAL "EXTENSION FOR IMPACT" DESCRIPTION---
AI-algorithms were created in the original project to predict when problems would occur in hospitals, such as breakdown of surgical equipment. The project produced isolated reports for hospitals which could be used to improve services, although the validity of the analysis will decrease over time as hospital services change. In this project extension, we will take the algorithms already created and integrate them with existing hospital data systems, so that hospitals are given round-the-clock, real-time analytics. This will enable hospitals to constantly react rapidly to problems on the horizon, as opposed to waiting for static reports every few months. For example, by knowing when equipment might break or what predicted surgical admissions are, the hospital can plan around this and be more efficient. It is critical to provide hospitals with this business intelligence as Covid-19 is causing services to be disrupted and changed on a daily basis, so they need our technology to keep up and provide better care.