Digital Control Centre for COVID-19

Project summary

The COVID-19 emergency poses a great challenge to clinicians working on the frontline who, time-strapped, are faced with managing multiple, seriously ill patients while assimilating the constantly changing treatment protocols for the virus. There is a need to better support frontline clinicians to:

• Identify the most severe patients requiring early intensive treatment in a timely manner to improve outcomes.
• Quickly recognise and treat the many complications that may affect COVID-19 positive patients (coinfections, immunomodulatory and thrombotic concerns).
• Ensure objective criteria for timely, safe and effective hospital discharge are closely adhered to.

A virtual control centre for patients who have tested positive for COVID-19 that will be under the supervision of an expert infectious disease specialist. Via this tool, the expert will receive relevant patient information from electronic health records that will enable them to:

• Independently assess, validate, or augment the patient treatment plan to support optimal outcomes.
• Identify the most seriously ill patients to be prioritised for specialist supervision.
• Acquire learnings about different patient needs and tailored therapeutic approaches (data collected will inform an artificial intelligence algorithm to provide predictions for patients who are likely to experience the worst outcomes).
• Determine which patients meet the appropriate criteria for hospital discharge and when.

This tool will be the first of its kind in the pandemic to combine both data collection attributes and clinical guidance on how best to work with those data. The anticipated impact is an improvement in patient outcomes, as their clinical needs will be addressed in an informed and timely manner and clinicians who will be supported to tailor their patient care, adjusting treatment plans according to need and predicted outcomes.