Hospital Emergency Response solution: A Microsoft Power Platform solution for healthcare emergency response

As the COVID-19 crisis escalated earlier this month, we released a Microsoft Power Platform solution for managing communications across an organization. Thousands of customers have since employed that solution, and many have reached out to ask for additional help in their response to the global pandemic.

The next wave of need we identified were from hospitals and healthcare providers: Swedish Health Services, the largest nonprofit health care provider in the Puget Sound, reached out to us seeking help to get a quick solution up and running. Like many healthcare organizations today, they needed to track and gain visibility over critical resources like available beds and scarce supplies like ventilators and masks. They needed their frontline workers like registered nurses and charge nurses to collect this information via their mobile phones. That information would feed into a decision support system that the emergency managers at these providers would use to make quick decisions in near real-time about where to divert these scarce resources.

Designed with and now in use at Swedish Health Services, the solution will be the first of its kind  at this Seattle hospital and will soon be rolled out throughout the Providence St. Joseph Health system, with which Swedish is affiliated. We want to make this solution available to all healthcare providers, so today we’re releasing the Emergency Response solution for any healthcare provider to download and track their scarce resources during an emergency.

Get the full instructions for how you can implement the solution.

The solution involves several components that work together:

Mobile apps for frontline staff to track key data points and communicate their needs. This includes multiple modules that can be independently activated for:

• Reporting the current status of RN staff and equipment in use
• Tracking supplies on hand on each floor or area of the hospital as well as the rate at which they’re being used
• Making requests for additional personnel by department, role, and urgency
• Reporting counts of those who are positive for COVID-19

Decision support dashboard for emergency managers to see aggregate data across the health system. The mobile apps feed this up-to-date central view that highlights the most urgent needs for beds, equipment, and staffing.

Administrative view for drilling down into the details and quickly configuring the mobile apps to adapt to changing conditions. Bringing a new location online or adapting the capacity of an existing location can be done with just a few clicks in the admin app.

All of these components are built on the Microsoft Power Platform and backed by the Common Data Service. The platform is designed for enterprise scale, capable of handling high volume and sensitive information. Every element from the apps to the underlying data model can be easily customized and extended with low code tools to meet the needs of specific organizations.

In order to support the rapid response of organizations who need these tools urgently, we’re also offering a 6-month free usage of full Power Apps capabilities to organizations in the Healthcare, Government, Non-profit, and Education sectors that are responding to the COVID-19 crisis. Contact your Microsoft account representative for details on how to take advantage of this trial.

Today’s release is just version one of this solution. We are already working closely with multiple additional hospital systems to implement the solution, and we will make improvements continually as we learn from those experiences.

Watch this space for the latest, and please continue to let us know how Microsoft Power Platform can help your team in these unprecedented times.

NOTE:

This solution is a sample and may be used with Microsoft Power Apps for dissemination of information only. This app is not intended or made available for use as a medical device, clinical support, diagnostic tool, or other technology intended to be used in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease or other conditions, and no license or right is granted by Microsoft to use this app for such purposes. This app is not designed or intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, treatment, or judgement and should not be used as such. Customer bears the sole risk and responsibility for any use of this app. Microsoft does not warrant that the app or any materials provided in connection therewith will be sufficient for any medical purposes or meet the health or medical requirements of any person.