Healthcare Analytics: Emergency Preparedness for COVID-19

The first COVID-19 case in the US was reported on January 20, 2020. As  the first cases were being reported in the US, Washington State became a  reliable source not just for hospital bed demand based on incidence and  community spread but also for modeling the impact of skilled nursing  facilities and assisted living facilities on hospital bed demand.  Various hospital bed demand modeling efforts began in earnest across the  United States in university settings, private consulting and health  systems. Nationally, the University of Washington Institute of Health  Metrics and Evaluation seemed to gain a footing and was adopted as a  source for many states for its ability to predict the epidemiological  curve by state, including the peak.

This book therefore addresses  a compelling need for documenting what has been learned by the academic  and professional healthcare communities in healthcare analytics and  disaster preparedness to this point in the pandemic. What is clear, at  least from the US perspective, is that the healthcare system was  unprepared and uncoordinated from an analytics perspective. Learning  from this experience will only better prepare all healthcare systems and  leaders for future crisis.

Both prospectively, from a modeling  perspective and retrospectively from a root cause analysis perspective,  analytics provide clarity and help explain causation and data  relationships. A more structured approach to teaching healthcare  analytics to students, using the pandemic and the rich dataset that has  been developed, provides a ready-made case study from which to learn and  inform disaster planning and preparedness. The pandemic has strained  the healthcare and public health systems. Researchers and practitioners  must learn from this crisis to better prepare our processes for future  pandemics, at minimum. Finally, government officials and policy makers  can use this data to decide how best to assist the healthcare and public  health systems in crisis.