Harvard Business Review suggested four ways digital transformation has the potential to improve operational decision-making:
1. Helping improve patient care
Data-driven systems can help provide physicians and hospitals with insights on where to place a patient, when to admit them and when a patient can be discharged. Research shows that when a patient needs to be admitted into the intensive care unit and gets placed in another part of the hospital, the patient will likely be readmitted and have a longer hospital stay. The data-driven systems can help healthcare systems decrease the chances of this happening.
2. Staffing conditions
Analytics can be used to relay staffing changes and information. Algorithms have the capability to predict nurse absenteeism rates, allowing hospitals to determine how many nurses to call in to avoid being short-staffed.
3. Optimizing schedules
Digital technologies can be applied to surgical procedures. Machine-learning algorithms can schedule procedures, scans and predict the duration of surgical procedures or MRIs.
4. Improving supply chain and inventory management
In 2018, hospitals in the U.S. spent an average of $11.9 million each on medical and surgical supplies. By automating the supply chain and inventory management, costs regarding supplies can be reduced by 50 percent, the report said.
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