The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Waiting Time for Medical Care in an Urgent Care Service for COVID-19: Single-Center Prospective Study

Kaio Jia Bin; Adler Araujo Ribeiro Melo; José Guilherme Moraes Franco da Rocha; Renata Pivi de Almeida; Vilson Cobello Junior; Fernando Liebhart Maia; Elizabeth de Faria; Antonio José Pereira; Linamara Rizzo Battistella; Suzane Kioko Ono

doi:10.2196/29012

The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Waiting Time for Medical Care in an Urgent Care Service for COVID-19: Single-Center Prospective Study

JMIR Form Res. 2022 Feb 1;6(2):e29012. doi: 10.2196/29012.

Affiliations

¹ Hospital das Clinicas, Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
² Department of Internal Medicine, Federal University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
³ Escola de Engenharia de Sao Carlos, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Sao Carlos, Brazil.
⁴ Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
⁵ Department of Gastroenterology, Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil.

PMID: 35103611
PMCID: PMC8812142
DOI: 10.2196/29012

Abstract

Background: To demonstrate the value of implementation of an artificial intelligence solution in health care service, a winning project of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Hacking Medicine Brazil competition was implemented in an urgent care service for health care professionals at Hospital das Clínicas of the Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Objective: The aim of this study was to determine the impact of implementation of the digital solution in the urgent care service, assessing the reduction of nonvalue-added activities and its effect on the nurses' time required for screening and the waiting time for patients to receive medical care.

Methods: This was a single-center, comparative, prospective study designed according to the Public Health England guide "Evaluating Digital Products for Health." A total of 38,042 visits were analyzed over 18 months to determine the impact of implementing the digital solution. Medical care registration, health screening, and waiting time for medical care were compared before and after implementation of the digital solution.

Results: The digital solution automated 92% of medical care registrations. The time for health screening increased by approximately 16% during the implementation and in the first 3 months after the implementation. The waiting time for medical care after automation with the digital solution was reduced by approximately 12 minutes compared with that required for visits without automation. The total time savings in the 12 months after implementation was estimated to be 2508 hours.

Conclusions: The digital solution was able to reduce nonvalue-added activities, without a substantial impact on health screening, and further saved waiting time for medical care in an urgent care service in Brazil during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords: COVID-19; artificial intelligence; digital health; health care management; nonvalue-added activities; pandemic; queue; robotic process automation; waiting time.

©Kaio Jia Bin, Adler Araujo Ribeiro Melo, José Guilherme Moraes Franco da Rocha, Renata Pivi de Almeida, Vilson Cobello Junior, Fernando Liebhart Maia, Elizabeth de Faria, Antonio José Pereira, Linamara Rizzo Battistella, Suzane Kioko Ono. Originally published in JMIR Formative Research (https://formative.jmir.org), 01.02.2022.