Chih-Chia Hsieh, Attending Physician, Dept. of Emergency Medicine

In 2020, National Cheng Kung University Hospital launched a real-time patient data platform that compiles procedure- and test-related data to simplify working processes for healthcare workers, facilitate early diagnoses and early treatment, and improve patient prognosis. The digital dashboard displays real-time statistics to help medical teams to understand the current status of each aspect of an emergency department and to personalize case management for patient treatment at the emergency department. When an abnormal event involving a patient occurs, the system notifies the health care worker responsible for the patient such that they can respond quickly, treatment delays are avoided, and patients do not experience unnecessary waiting time or systemic waste during their hospital visits.

The smart emergency department management system comprises a digital dashboard subsystem and a warning notification subsystem. The dashboard presents the layout of the emergency department, the real-time data of patients, and the number of patients waiting for a bed. The system marks the critical values in the medical test reports of patients, sends out delayed examination warnings to the responsible worker, and displays the results of imaging tests (i.e., computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, and echocardiography). This smart system displays abnormal situations on the dashboard in real time, and it concurrently sends warnings to the mobile device of the responsible worker, thereby improving patient care and management in smart medicine. This smart emergency department management system won the Symbol of National Quality award for smart medicine (smart solution category) at the National Healthcare Quality Award in 2020. In the same year, the system won a smart medicine award for the Health Smart Taiwan category at the Healthcare Expo Taiwan organized by the Institute for Biotechnology and Medicine Industry. In 2022, the system won the award of distinction for poster presentation of a smart emergency department management system at the Taiwan Continuous Improvement Awards. These achievements are a testament to the clinical value and societal recognition of the smart emergency department management system.

Figure 1. Digital dashboard module of smart emergency department management system.

Figure 2. Smart emergency department management system that integrates artificial intelligence modules for automatic warning: artificial intelligence module for interpreting intracranial hemorrhage on computed tomography as an example.