Summary of Proposal

We want to establish a center of excellence for knowledge transfer and further development of the models, tools, and techniques that BIN researchers have developed in collaboration with IBM and Ontario hospitals for care process management and analytics. The technology brings BI to hospitals and promises enhanced care process management including significant reduction of patients’ wait time, especial in emergency departments. Interest has been expressed in such technologies from other hospitals in Canada and in the U.S.

We would like to hire a post doc who has BIN research experience to write grant proposals to fund the center, create a permanent demo showcasing our reference architecture for care process management and analytics to date, develop and deliver training on BIN models, tools and techniques.

Objectives

–          Establish a center of excellence to maintain the existing reference architecture that combines the latest IBM products for Business Process Management, Data Integration and Business Intelligence with the models, tools and techniques our research has developed for care process management and analytics.

–          Continue to train students, researchers and healthcare professionals on such technologies.

–          Continue ongoing research and expand the knowledge base of case studies and clinical trials that validate the efficacy of our research results.  This includes expanding our collaboration networks to other hospitals, companies, and researchers.

The funds will contribute to the salary of one post doctorate researcher who will help in writing funding proposals and publish scientific articles, as well as development of showcase material for knowledge transfer.

Recent Progress

We have successfully validated our research with a case study supporting Acute Coronary Syndrome clinical pathway at William Osler Hospital in Toronto in collaboration with IBM. The Ottawa hospital and Queensway Carleton hospital have expressed interest with IBM in joining us in the creation of center of excellence to continue this research past the bin project. We have also had preliminary conversations with hospitals in the United States and the rest of Canada.

Research results have been published in a number of journals, books, conferences, and workshops.

Impact

A survey of 100 clinicians and information professionals who evaluated the Osler case study showed that our proposed reference architecture will dramatically improve care process management and can be deployed within hospitals within 2 to 5 years time frame.

This research has the potential to significantly improvement operations, management and predictability of health care. In particular 1) track in real time whether service delivery is being carried out within medical guidelines limits 2) integrate location information with business process management using smart phones and tablets to pinpoint exactly where patients and clinicians are in terms of location and clinical pathway 3) deliver in real time alerts and relevant patients data to the right person at the right location at the right time.