Healthcare quarterly (Toronto, Ont.)
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With the global outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals in Canada and around the world have been forced to consider conservation strategies to ensure continued availability of personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare providers. To mitigate critical PPE shortages, Sinai Health System (Sinai Health), a large academic healthcare institution in Canada, has developed and operationalized a standard operating procedure for the collection, decontamination and reuse of N95 respirators and other single-use PPE using a vaporized hydrogen peroxide decontamination method. Sinai Health has incorporated stringent quality assurance steps to ensure that the N95 respirators are successfully decontaminated without deformation and are safe to use.
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A new decade often begins with new life, new relationships and new purposes. Unfortunately, the start of this decade has been anything but, thanks to the rather unprecedented global crisis that has rapidly taken over our lives. COVID-19 - which seemed to be just a flu-like infection spreading modestly in mainland China - has suddenly became a pandemic that has crashed economies and broken health systems worldwide.
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As a chief nurse in Ontario during the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2003, I never thought I would experience anything even remotely similar, let alone exponentially worse, in my lifetime. Seventeen years and almost 17,000 km later, the COVID-19 crisis feels eerily similar in many ways, and completely different in others.
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Primary care is the first line of defence in healthcare, particularly during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. In the London-Middlesex region of Ontario, a critical shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) was identified among primary care physicians (PCPs). ⋯ In response to the PPE shortage in COVID-19, our efforts evolved into a complex adaptive system, supported by an organizational body with a pre-existing communication infrastructure, to great success. Our scope extended beyond simple PPE provision to PCPs. Furthermore, our initiative established a framework for a centralized response to PPE shortage in Ontario Health West.
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Artificial intelligence offers the promise to revolutionize the way healthcare is delivered in the future. To capitalize on the value of advanced analytics and artificial intelligence, organizations must focus on building organizational capabilities. This report shares an operating model for insight and change in healthcare comprising six key components: analytics technology and operations, data governance, change and automation, advanced analytics and insights, analytics literacy and strategy and relationship management. The adoption of the proposed model will build core capabilities that will enable organizations to connect data to decision making and realize value from its investment in advanced analytics.