Alfred Health in Melbourne has entered a collaboration with GE HealthCare to improve the connection between its hospitals and community services by using Command Center to help enable rapid and informed decision-making with well-integrated critical data and key personnel in a co-located environment.
By centralising information and leveraging digital systems, the system is designed to enhance situational awareness, communication, and overall operational and clinical efficiency.
The software supports hospital systems by simplifying the orchestration of patient care, including balancing competing demands from all service points across the hospital system.
The Alfred hospital — part of Alfred Health — is home to Australia’s busiest trauma centre and Victoria’s largest Intensive Care Unit. The health service also operates 18 statewide services, and Command Center will use AI and machine learning to help optimise capacity to manage high patient volumes and complex cases efficiently, while supporting the expansion of remote care as demand grows.
The solution is part of GE HealthCare’s AI-enabled portfolio. Using a suite of specialised tiles — discrete applications that live within the platform, the system integrates streaming data from electronic management records (EMRs) and other source systems to help healthcare providers match patients with the right bed quickly.
Amit Yadav, GE HealthCare President and CEO ASEAN, Korea, Australia and New Zealand, said, “In health systems where it has been adopted, it improves operational efficiency to support frontline caregivers, helps to streamline patient flow, predict bottlenecks and delays, and balance workloads and resources. The system can support hospitals’ goals to ensure that patients are treated in the wards best suited to manage their often complex care, with the potential to reduce the need for additional wards and beds. Command Center helps operational leaders manage hospital-wide efficiency and improve care coordination through advanced algorithms and real-time insights, which could ultimately enhance hospital performance.”
Alfred Health Chief Executive Adam Horsburgh said health care is well-suited to harnessing intelligent computer systems that can process vast amounts of patient and hospital data in seconds.
“We are here to provide our patients with excellent and compassionate care, and to be able to do that in the most effective and timely way possible. As our services continue to grow, and are offered in more and more locations, this exciting project promises to support us in continuing this effort for our community,” Horsburgh said.