Taichung Veterans General Hospital, Taichung 40705, Taiwan.
Department of Information Management, Chaoyang University of Technology, Taichung 413310, Taiwan.
Sensors (Basel). 2024 Jun 20;24(12):4020. doi: 10.3390/s24124020.
Inefficient patient transport in hospitals often leads to delays, overworked staff, and suboptimal resource utilization, ultimately impacting patient care. Existing dispatch management algorithms are often evaluated in simulation environments, raising concerns about their real-world applicability. This study presents a real-world experiment that bridges the gap between theoretical dispatch algorithms and real-world implementation. It applies process capability analysis at Taichung Veterans General Hospital in Taichung, Taiwan, and utilizes IoT for real-time tracking of staff and medical devices to address challenges associated with manual dispatch processes. Experimental data collected from the hospital underwent statistical evaluation between January 2021 and December 2021. The results of our experiment, which compared the use of traditional dispatch methods with the Beacon dispatch method, found that traditional dispatch had an overtime delay of 41.0%; in comparison, the Beacon dispatch method had an overtime delay of 26.5%. These findings demonstrate the transformative potential of this solution for not only hospital operations but also for improving service quality across the healthcare industry in the context of smart hospitals.
医院中效率低下的患者转运常常导致延误、工作人员过度劳累和资源利用不理想，最终影响患者护理。现有的调度管理算法通常在模拟环境中进行评估，这引发了对其在实际应用中的适用性的担忧。本研究通过在台湾台中荣民总医院进行的真实实验，弥合了理论调度算法与实际实施之间的差距。它应用了过程能力分析，并利用物联网实时跟踪工作人员和医疗设备，以解决手动调度过程中存在的挑战。从 2021 年 1 月至 2021 年 12 月期间，从医院收集了实验数据，并进行了统计评估。我们的实验结果比较了传统调度方法和 Beacon 调度方法的使用情况，发现传统调度的加班延迟为 41.0%；相比之下，Beacon 调度方法的加班延迟为 26.5%。这些发现表明，这种解决方案不仅对医院运营，而且对智能医院背景下整个医疗保健行业提高服务质量都具有变革性的潜力。
