NHSX has announced a COVID-19 forecasting tool, developed with tech firm Palantir, is to be made available to local NHS organisations.
NHSX said the forecasting tool that is part of the NHS COVID-19 Data Store, will support local and national health leaders by providing information and data related to COVID-19.
The technology has been used at a national level to understand bed capacity and availability. Now local hospitals will be given access to the forecasting tool to help plan capacity for both COVID-19 patients and routine care and operations, particularly over the next few weeks.
The tool has been built and developed by artificial intelligence firm Faculty, and uses a machine learning process based on Bayesian hierarchical modelling to warn hospitals so they can divert staff, beds and other equipment such as oxygen or ventilators needed to tackle COVID-19 cases. It works by learning from the data from previous outbreaks such as bed use and early warning indicators such as 111 call volumes, to model what might happen in the future.
Indra Joshi, Director of AI, NHSX, said: “As we continue to deal with the greatest public health emergency in a century, the NHS continues to rise to the challenge, and by using this leading technology, we will help support frontline staff in their ongoing mission to save as many lives as they can.”
“This tool helps services plan the bringing back on of services for other patients safely, while flexing capacity locally for COVID-19 care.”
The tool is also being used to understand how the virus impacted on some patients living with diabetes. The data store will support one of the largest studies to date on risk factors associated with COVID-19 death.
NHSX noted the data used will be either pseudonymised, anonymised or aggregated and does not identify any individual. The NHS has signed a new four month contract with Palantir, which includes requirements to package up the work they’ve been doing so the service can go out to tender in an open procurement process.
