Tampa General Hospital Unites with Florida Hospitals to Share Data in the Fight Against COVID-19

TAMPA, Fla., April 30, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Tampa General Hospital is partnering with SME Solutions Group, Inc. and other hospitals in Tampa Bay and Southwest Florida to share data across systems. This new collaborative allows health care systems that typically compete for market share to join forces and battle the COVID-19 pandemic together.

Through this partnership, interactive dashboards have been developed to aggregate data among 51 hospitals.  The dashboard, called the COVID-19 Florida West Coast Regional Data Exchange, is giving health care leaders a bird's eye view with real-time data, so clinical teams in multiple locations can make the best decisions to help patients find care at the right time and in the right place. 

Tampa General Hospital is monitoring a dashboard that shows how many patients are being treated for COVID-19 at these 51 hospitals in Florida, including those in Tampa Bay and surrounding areas. The dashboard reflects critical information that includes highlighting the resources available at each hospital such as the number of available negative-pressure rooms, ICU rooms and ventilator counts.

"As we navigate day by day, through this public health crisis… this dashboard is critical in helping us potentially save lives. It gives us situational awareness of resources that are available across the region to take care of COVID-19 patients," said Dr. Peter Chang, TGH vice president of care transitions. "It breaks down silos between competing hospitals for this collaborative community effort."

The result is a powerful partnership between TGH, AdventHealth, BayCare Health System, HCA Healthcare, Lakeland Regional Health, Lee Health and Manatee Memorial Hospital.

"Today more than ever, data integrity and data trust are of the utmost importance to ensure proper communication and to improve the speed of decision making.  At a time when the balance between speed and accuracy is crucial, making critical data readily available, accessible, and reliable to these hospitals is a must," said Chris Moyer, President & CEO of SME.  

SME worked  closely with Tampa General and partnered with Qlik to donate and deploy Qlik Sense Enterprise software as part of the project. One of SME's key roles in this project was to rapidly deploy a cloud environment allowing approved users to access the data while maintaining privacy and security protocols.

The dashboard shows the number of patients with COVID-19 and those without COVID-19, as well as which hospitals have the capacity to take in additional patients. Every hospital bed count differs, so this data is life-saving to see how many ICU beds are available simultaneously in the region.

This is not only helpful for hospital leaders, but also for emergency managers and state health officials who can make better decisions with a wide overview of how the region is responding to the pandemic. Among other metrics, the COVID-19 Regional Data Exchange:

• Tracks the number of "patients under investigation," who may have COVID-19 but are awaiting test results;
• Tracks the number of available negative-pressure hospital rooms, ICU beds and ventilators; and
• Incorporates a forecasting model developed by IBM to anticipate COVID-19 patients in the ICU.

"Tampa General Hospital has a vision to become the safest and most innovative academic healthcare system in the country. We look for partners that can help us be creative in ways we've never thought imaginable. This data is helping us join forces as health care leaders and systems to fight this global pandemic affecting our entire world," said TGH President and CEO John Couris.  "It's a great use of technology, but even more than that, it's a powerful tool of collaboration to benefit our community."

Media Contact: Curtis Krueger
Senior Public Relations Editor
(813) 844-7322 (direct)
(727) 580-1813 (cell)
[email protected]
www.tgh.org

SOURCE Florida Health Sciences Center, Inc. d/b/a Tampa General Hospital

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