Faculty’s decision intelligence is a new field of technology designed to use data for better decision making, reduce spending, and improve patient outcomes.
As the UK enters winter, the NHS is dealing with unprecedented challenges, coupled with intense and growing scrutiny over its performance.
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Ambulance response times are worsening, with the most urgent callouts taking almost 20 per cent longer in 2021-22 than in 2018-19. Waiting times for GP referrals, emergency care, and diagnoses are all rising, and over 7 million patients are now waiting for treatment.
The UK’s high inflation and stagnant growth mean budgets are stretched. Nurse and paramedic strikes are imminent, and chronic understaffing — such as among doctors and midwives — is contributing to poorer outcomes and difficult working conditions. Combined with a possible “tripledemic” of covid-19, seasonal flu, and respiratory syncytial virus, the NHS is facing a perfect storm.
The situation looks bleak. So what, if anything, can be done to improve it?
How can the NHS improve outcomes?
As with most complex challenges, there is no single solution.
The simplest answer would be more staff, more equipment, and more hospitals. But this would require a huge investment of time and money, both of which are in short supply.
For this reason, any workable solutions will need to focus on using existing resources as effectively as possible, without pushing already exhausted and overstretched healthcare workers beyond their capacity.
They will need to be cost-effective and show rapid results that can immediately give staff the support they desperately need.
This might sound like a pipe dream. You’d be forgiven for being cynical.
But technology, whilst obviously not solving everything, can help — and more specifically, it is decision intelligence that can support the NHS right now.
What is decision intelligence and how can it help?
Decisions, made by people, are at the heart of everything the NHS does. Workers make patient-critical decisions every day, often under severe emotional and time-based pressure.
Staff are making the best decisions they can, given the difficult situations they are in. But this pressure can result in decisions that sometimes aren’t optimal in terms of cost, efficiency, and patient outcomes.
But what if technology could help?
Decision intelligence is a new field of technology designed to provide people with the insight they need to make better decisions.
DI combines an organisation’s existing data with AI, translating them into actionable, prescriptive advice that can be implemented for immediate results.
To be clear, this is not about creating more data for the NHS. It already collects a huge amount, which is a huge burden on staff. But organising data, identifying insights, and determining how to use them is difficult for humans to do alone.
DI automates this process and cuts the time and resources needed to find solutions. In essence, it helps people make effective decisions, faster.
Applications of decision intelligence in the NHS
As The Telegraph recently explored in this article, technology can support the NHS by simplifying decision-making at all levels of the organisation, from high-level strategy all the way down to individual patient-level decisions.
Examples of specific applications in the NHS include:
- Bed allocation
- Ambulance callout optimisation
- Budget allocation
- Preparation and response (e.g. for pandemics)
In a crisis, what matters is how an organisation functions on a day-to-day basis, how it plans for what is to come, and how it reacts to events as they happen. At the core of all these processes lies effective decision-making.
Decision intelligence can help make sense of the masses of data already being generated, and provide immediate and much-needed relief for overstretched teams amidst soaring demand.
The NHS has been told to do more with less for decades. But workers — the nurses, doctors, porters, and healthcare assistants — have a finite capacity.
Instead of adding to their workloads, DI simplifies a wide range of decisions and drives greater efficiency across the board.
Prioritising better decision-making for operational excellence needs to be part of the future of our NHS, for this winter and beyond.
Find out more at: faculty.ai
