Klinik - Intelligent Patient Flow Management

Digital health technologies (DHT) are increasingly developed to support healthcare systems around the world. However, they are frequently lacking evidence-based medicine and medical validation. There is considerable need in the western countries to allocate healthcare resources accurately and give the population detailed and reliable health information enabling to take greater responsibility for their health. Intelligent patient flow management system (IPFM, product name Klinik Frontline) is developed to meet these needs. In practice, IPFM is used for decision support in the triaging and diagnostic processes as well as automatizing the management of inflow of the patients. The core of the IPFM is a clinical artificial intelligence (AI), which utilizes a comprehensive medical database of clinical correlations generated by medical doctors. The study population of this research consists of patients from the Emergency Department of Kuopio University Hospital (KUH). Data will be gathered during 2 weeks of piloting, after which the results will be analysed. Anticipated number of patients to the study is minimum of 246 patients, with objective to be several hundreds. When attending to the hospital, patients will report their demographics, background information and symptoms using structured IPFM online form. Patients entering the unit in an ambulance or with need of immediate care of healthcare professionals due to severe and acute conditions are referred similar to normal process to ensure the patient safety. Results obtained from IPFM are blinded from the healthcare professional and IPFM does not affect professional's clinical decision making in any way. The data obtained from IPFM online form and clinical data from the emergency department and KUH will be analysed after the data collection. The main aim of the research is to validate the use of IPFM by evaluating the association of IPFM output with 1) urgency and severity of the conditions (using Emergency Severity In