Medical Physics, Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK
School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences, Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine, King's College London, London, UK.
BMJ Open Qual. 2021 Apr;10(2). doi: 10.1136/bmjoq-2021-001383.
During the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, the UK government took the decision to centralise the procurement, allocation and distribution of mission-critical intensive care unit (ICU) medical equipment. Establishing new supply chains in the context of global shortages presented significant challenges. This report describes the development of an innovative platform developed rapidly and voluntarily by clinical engineers, to mobilise the UK's shared medical equipment inventory, in order to match ICU capacity to dynamically evolving clinical demand. The 'Coronavirus ICU Medical Equipment Distribution' platform was developed to optimise ICU equipment allocation, distribution, collection, redeployment and traceability across the National Health Service. Although feedback on the platform has largely been very positive, the platform was built for a scenario that did not fully materialise in the UK and this affected the implementation approach. As such, it was not used to its full potential. Nonetheless, the platform and the insights derived and disseminated in its development have been extremely valuable. It provides a prototype for not only optimising system capacity in future pandemic scenarios but also a means for maximally exploiting the large amount of new equipment in the UK health system, as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. This early stage innovation has demonstrated that a system-wide pooled information resource can benefit the operations of individual organisations. It has also generated numerous lessons to be borne in mind in innovation projects.
在冠状病毒大流行的第一波期间，英国政府决定集中采购、分配和分发关键任务的重症监护病房 (ICU) 医疗设备。在全球短缺的情况下建立新的供应链带来了重大挑战。本报告描述了临床工程师迅速自愿开发的创新平台的发展情况，该平台旨在调动英国共享的医疗设备库存，以根据不断变化的临床需求动态匹配 ICU 容量。“冠状病毒 ICU 医疗设备分发”平台旨在优化全国卫生服务系统内 ICU 设备的分配、分发、收集、重新部署和可追溯性。尽管对该平台的反馈大多非常积极，但该平台是为英国尚未完全出现的情况而构建的，这影响了实施方法。因此，它没有被充分利用。尽管如此，该平台及其在开发过程中获得的见解仍然具有极高的价值。它不仅为未来大流行情景下优化系统容量提供了一个原型，而且还为最大限度地利用英国卫生系统因冠状病毒大流行而新增的大量设备提供了一种手段。这一早期创新表明，一个系统范围的集中信息资源可以使各个组织的运作受益。它还产生了许多在创新项目中需要牢记的经验教训。
