Emergencies are nothing new to hospitals. But the catastrophic, year-long emergency that was the COVID-19 crisis brought with it unprecedented challenges. Hospitals were left scrambling to save lives while trying to outrun the virus; resources were scarce, and time was of the essence.
In response, the Dutch Ministry of Public Health established the Dutch National Coordination Centre for Patient Distribution (LCPS in Dutch). The aim of the centre was to optimize utilization of intensive care facilities through better patient distribution. The centre became fully operational within four days. Shortly after opening, the managers realized that their productivity software wasn’t sufficient to support the needs and complexity of the operation.
Simplifying complexity in a hurry
LCPS needed to hit the ground running, so they turned to IG&H to create an intuitive and easy-to-use software solution that could:
Easily manage greater process complexity
Continually adapt to new insights and needs
Ensure accuracy, even in stressful situations
Ensure proper handling of privacy and reporting data
Be rapidly implemented in a crisis situation
IG&H delivers
IG&H Portugal worked with LCPS managers to develop and deploy the Patient Evacuation Coordination Cell (PECC) software. The initial release was installed within two weeks, and after a bit of fine tuning, the PECC was fully operations-capable within another two weeks.
The PECC is the technological hub of all patient distribution activity for LCPS, enabling the collection and routing of patient movement requests from every hospital to the appropriate Regional Coordination Centre for Patient Distribution (RCPS-en). The Regional Centres are then empowered to act upon the requests or forward them to LCPS if there is no capacity in the region. The PECC also supports the organizing of transport by ambulance or mobile intensive care unit to the destination hospital.
Our caring and daring approach Achieving this level of sophistication in a short timeframe is business as usual for IG&H. Our dedicated teams are 100% focused on going the extra mile for our clients using the most advanced technologies available. Our approach ensures:
Total alignment of business goals with technological capabilities
Extremely rapid and secure development/deployment cycles
The agility to adapt quickly based on user experience
To help guarantee the speed and security of our development/deployment cycles, IG&H employs a leading low-code development platform from our technology partner OutSystems.
“IG&H pulled it off. They brought together the right mixture of people, knowledge and technology to build the system that is the main tool to support the distribution of COVID patients. This enabled us to act fast on every patient movement request, and to make sure that all patients receive the care they needed, even if this was abroad in Germany. Also, in the second wave, this tool is still used by every hospital and Dutch Acute Care Region (ROAZ in Dutch).”
- Dutch National Coordination Centre for Patient Distribution (LCPS)
Short movie about the National Coordination Centre for Patient Distribution (LCPS)
Documentary (in Dutch)
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