Optimizing Emergency Department Resources with AI Decision Support Tool

As the health care system aims to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, emergency departments (EDs) are experiencing system-wide pressures: patients are coming in sicker; staff turnover has been unprecedented; and patients are experiencing longer wait times before seeing a doctor in the ED and before receiving a hospital bed. Unity Health Toronto is one of Canada’s largest Catholic healthcare networks. It is home to the nation’s only hospital-based applied AI program, which has launched more than 50 AI and analytics tools into clinical practice. The collaborative project between Signal 1 and the hospital partners will provide ED staff with a tool to better manage patient flow. The project will deploy real-time AI systems in a hospital ED to optimize staffing resources, accelerate safe patient discharge and reduce the volume of avoidable hospital admissions. Signal1’s system uses patient charting data to predict the likelihood that a patient can be discharged.