The most appealing aspect of Humber River Hospital is their real time use of event-driven technology to increase efficiency by 20% (The Agenda with Steve Paikin & Jeganathan, 2018). Their data driven command center is similar to mission control for NASA, military war rooms for governments, and air traffic control of the FAA. Although the principles of the “The Reactive Manifesto” are primarily for software architecture, the principles still hold true for creating a data driven command center (Bonér et al.).
First, responsiveness is created by having a central command center. Having a centralized mode of communication ensures that any issues get resolved quickly by having a bird’s eye view of resources. Top management can determine how best to resolve issues within the hospital. Having a central command also ensures that organizations keep with the performance and guidelines of the hospital (King, 1983).
Secondly, the system is elastic. It’s able to reduce bottlenecks by smoothing out assets. Portering and housekeeping creates the biggest backing up of hospital resources. A housekeeper can send a message to central command that they are in a room cleaning (The Agenda with Steve Paikin & Jeganathan, 2018). When the room is clean, a message is simultaneously relayed to a nurse that the room is ready.
Thirdly, the system is message driven. The nurses use Ascom phones to report their shift and integrate with the nurse call system, bedside terminals, and real time locations (Ascom Americas, 2016) This helps with alerts and messages being coordinated properly through the command center. This simple device helps guide the staff on the ground as well as inform the command center.
It’s safe to speculate that the centralized command system of Humber River Hospital is not without problems rooted in basic organizational structures. Having a centralized command implies that decisions have to be made top down (King, 1983). A nurse would be limited in their actions even if their conscious and experience dictates otherwise. A facility may be better taken cared of if staff members feel a sense of ownership rather than knowing that command central makes most of the decisions. There is also a problem of a bad actor inducing central command to make a bad decision. We have seen this in military command centers where the enemy has purposefully used false intelligence to cause generals to make bad moves. In a worst case scenario, a hacker can create havoc by displaying bad data on command control screens.
References
The Agenda with Steve Paikin, & Jeganathan, J. (2018, January 31). Hospitals of the Future [Video]. Youtube. https://youtu.be/BIy3zNLbRPc
Ascom Americas. (2016, August 3). Humber River, North America’s First Fully Digital Hospital [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjLfYZUqsyM
Bonér, Jonas, et al. “The Reactive Manifesto.” The Reactive Manifesto, 16 Sept. 2014, www.reactivemanifesto.org/. Accessed 16 Aug. 2020.
King, John. “Centralized Versus Decentralized Computing: Organizational Considerations and Management Options.” ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) 15.4 (1983): 319–349. Web.