GE HealthCare Unveils AI Tool to See Hospital Bottlenecks Coming

GE HealthCare has introduced CareIntellect for Operations, an artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) application to help health systems forecast capacity constraints up to three days in advance.

The company hopes that the tool will provide comprehensive unit-, department-, and enterprise-level views of emerging bottlenecks. It analyzes hundreds of patient- and operational-level data points to predict constraints, then recommends prescriptive actions to optimize areas of capacity and throughput.

In August, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reported that U.S. emergency room wait times average 2.5 hours, reaching five hours in some states. Rising costs, an aging population and increasing chronic disease are driving longer waits and straining health systems.

The Queen’s Health Systems and Duke Health will be the first to implement the application, which analyzes data like bed availability, patient delays, staffing, wait times, and ancillary services.

CareIntellect for Operations uses two proprietary GE HealthCare AI models: Pressure Forecast analyzes historical and real-time operational data to predict constraints across hospitals, departments and units up to 72 hours ahead, while Estimated Day of Discharge forecasts individual patients’ discharge timing using longitudinal data. The application draws on more than two decades of the company’s hospital operations expertise and insights from its Command Center software, which is used by almost 500 facilities worldwide.

The platform updates discharge estimates hourly and surfaces recommended actions, dynamically prioritizing workflows to help teams manage system strain and reduce impacts on access, care delivery and capacity, the company said.

Comments from GE HealthCare, Duke Health, and The Queen’s Health Systems

Dr. Taha Kass-Hout, global chief Science and technology officer at GE HealthCare: “Health systems need to know where pressure is building and what to do next. CareIntellect for Operations brings together patient and operational signals to give teams a 72-hour view of emerging constraints and help them act earlier. AI in hospital operations has to give teams predictions they can understand, workflow-connected recommendations they can use, and a system they can trust at the point of decision—and that is the bar we designed this solution to meet.”

Katie Flanagan, associate VP of patient flow and care coordination at Duke Health: “Managing demand and capacity across our system in a coordinated, predictable way is essential to delivering exceptional care. CareIntellect for Operations builds on three years of partnership with GE HealthCare, giving our teams a three-day view of what’s coming so they can move faster from analysis to action, for the benefit of our patients.”

Alex Wroe, COO at The Queen’s Medical Center: “At Queen’s, improving access for the communities we serve is one of our top priorities, and optimizing our operations is critical to helping us achieve that. We’ve seen firsthand how this type of advanced operational software can help us free up more capacity and better use our resources. We look forward to taking this work to the next level, helping us move beyond reacting to capacity challenges and toward proactively ensuring that our beds, teams, and resources are available for the patients who need them most.”