Will AI-based emergency care networks solve the ‘ER-touring’ problem?

Oh Seung-jin, head of the Insurer Hospital Policy Office at Ilsan Hospital, explained an AI hotline that connects hospitals in northwestern Gyeonggi Province to help ease the emergency room shortage problem in a news conference on Monday.

The National Health Insurance Service (HNIS) Ilsan Hospital has recently established an emergency care network in northwestern Gyeonggi Province.

The medical community’s attention is now on whether the artificial intelligence-based healthcare system can be a new way to solve the “emergency room-touring” problem.

The new “AI hotline” connects Paju Medical Center, Pocheon Medical Center, and Uijeongbu Medical Center to the NHI Ilsan Hospital to create a “complete regional essential medical system,” which can prevent medical gaps and respond immediately to severe emergency cases like cardiocerebrovascular patients in the region.

In the northwestern Gyeonggi Province, medical institutions are limited in providing adequate medical services for severe emergency diseases, such as myocardial infarction and stroke. In the case of Paju, 54.7 percent of patients are transferred to the neighboring city of Goyang.

However, responding to emergencies is difficult because the general transport information, like severe emergency patients’ status, cannot be checked during transportation. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a hotline utilizing AI to make immediate medical response possible.

Against this backdrop, Oh Seung-jin, head of the Insurer Hospital Policy Office at NHIS Ilsan Hospital, held a news conference in Goyang before holding a conference for the “Kickoff for building an AI-based emergency medical network" in northwestern Gyeonggi Province, introducing the AI hotline that connects public medical institutions in the province’s northwestern part.

“In Paju, more than half of the severe emergency patients are transferred to Goyang. And most public healthcare institutions that served as hospitals exclusively responsible for treating Covid-19 patients are struggling to operate fully because the bed utilization rate is not increasing and there are not enough outpatients,” Oh said. “Emergency medical services are also experiencing problems because they are underutilized and transferred elsewhere.”

He explained that Ilsan Hospital, a regional central medical institution, and a regional emergency medical center, has been operating a system to transfer and treat patients who cannot be resolved at the hospital by creating a hotline with nearby areas since December. He added that it has received and treated about 25 patients in six months.

So far, all patients had to be checked over the phone and handed over when they arrived at the hospital. From now on, however, an AI-powered network of emergency medical systems can provide immediate and coordinated medical care, Oh explained.

The AI hotline includes AI emergency services, medical AI solutions, and a cloud hospital information system (HIS).

First, it installed emergency kiosks to connect four local responsible medical institutions in the northwestern Gyeonggi Province, enabling real-time monitoring of the status of patients being transported by EMS-enabled mobile kiosks. It then introduced a medical AI solution that includes image analysis and severity prediction algorithms for emergency patients related to cardiovascular diseases to enable quick response to emergency patient abnormalities and transfer decisions.

In addition, by deploying a cloud HIS that connects the emergency departments of local accountable care organizations, the hospitals can share patient status in real-time and optimize decision support for patient care.

“No one knows the status of patients who come to Ilsan Hospital by private ambulance,” he said. “It takes about 30 minutes to get from Paju to Ilsan Hospital, but Pocheon and Yeoncheon are about an hour away. By installing a kiosk, institutions in both cities can see the patient’s vitals and transfer status information while the patient is on the move.”

He went on to say, “Patient severity prediction solutions are important, but we also need to be ready to accept patients from Paju Hospital. The reason for the ongoing ER shortage lies in difficulty securing beds and specialists, so we will apply this algorithm to transfer the lowest-risk patients to the general ward.”

What will the new AI-based hotline look like?

How will an AI-powered emergency medical system network in northwestern Gyeonggi Province differ from the existing one?

For instance, medical information is exchanged between hospitals when a diagnosis is made according to the clinical decision support system (CDSS) for a severe emergency patient arriving at Paju Hospital. Patient signs and video data are shared through a kiosk while moving to Ilsan Hospital to check the patient’s condition continuously.

In addition, using the severity prediction solution, Ilsan Hospital can secure beds in advance and determine the direction of patient treatment through image information, enabling immediate medical service response upon patient arrival without delaying treatment.

Ilsan Hospital plans to build the system in public healthcare institutions in northwestern Gyeonggi Province by the end of this year and start a demonstration project next year.

“If the AI-based healthcare system digital transformation support project runs well, it will be possible to use it as a remote consultation system not only for emergency room connections but also for problems such as not seeing patients properly due to the lack of specialists at local medical centers,” Oh said.

Expressing expectation that the use of AI solutions will ease polarizing medical care, Oh said, “By innovating the digital transformation of responses to cardiovascular emergencies in the western and northern regions of Gyeonggi Province, we will bridge the medical gap between regions and improve the quality of public healthcare services.”