News
January 4, 2008
"Data farming used to improve nursing capacity"Diana Manos, Senior Editor
Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare of Memphis, Tenn. has joined the University of Memphis Center for Healthcare Technology on an innovative research program aiming to help nurses do their jobs.
The research method, known as "data farming," uses computer simulation to analyze thousands of nurse workflow scenarios and find ways to apply healthcare IT and physical layouts, increasing the capacity of a nurse to be at bedside.
According to W. Joseph Ketcherside, MD, senior vice president and chief medical informatics officer at MLH, data farming was originally used by the Marine Warfighting Laboratory in Quantico, Va. , to improve understanding of modern combat situations.
Ketcherside said the MLH data farming project, which has only just started, is relatively new for healthcare and will look at all the variable options of what a nurse does in a day to determine ways to get the best care with the fewest amount of resources. By doing a sample workflow with simulated patients, MLH can analyze treatment of 5,000 imaginary patients overnight and we can manipulate it in all sorts of ways, rather than building it in the real world which would take months and months, Ketcherside said.
"I thought what doctors did was hard, it turns out what nurses do in a day is 10 times more complicated in terms of workflow than what anyone else does in a day," he said. "Most products on the market don't handle everything that nurses do. Commercial products are still very immature." Data farming aims to allow the hospital to use products most efficiently.
According to Paul Cornell, director of the Center for Healthcare and Technology at the University of Memphis, data farming should not be confused with the sometimes controversial data mining, which uses existing de-identified patient data to study marketing patterns. Rather, data farming "grows" data by running thousands of simulations on imaginary patients and imaginary scenarios to find out previously unknown options for providing care.
The Center is also using data farming to look at ways to improve the physical environment to aid nurses, Cornell said. This could include grouping patients together so nurses have less walking around to do, and observing how much will this impact quality of care.
According to Cornell, preliminary results of data farming models have shown it may be possible to make changes that can result in shorter hospital stays, resulting in a positive impact on the bottom line. In addition, if changes can be made to improve a nurse's capacity, the hospital may be able to improve retention of nursing staff and could possibly reduce nurse-to-patient ratios.
"People can make intuitive arguments that if we give them more tools they will do better, but those cost money," Cornell said. Data-farming allows hospital executives an additional bit of information for making decisions about purchasing healthcare IT and making physical changes to the hospital.
Ketcherside said the hospital and the University of Memphis Center for Healthcare Technology will publish a report on what they discover through data farming and it will hold workshops for interested parties on how to do data farming at their facility.
