An ambition to advance healthcare through AI

Applying AI to unlock the value of data

Rafael R. Guerrero, Consultant Congenital Cardiac Surgeon, Clinical Director of Cardiac Services & Director of Innovation at Alder Hey explains the hospital’s ambition: “The more that we look outside at how you are using technology and apply it in a rapid way and adopt it into healthcare, it is going to make a huge impact.”

The hospital generates a great deal of data about its operations, patient pathways, medical challenges, treatments, responses and more. Guerrero says, “With the amount of information we are generating in the last few years, it is vital that all that data is not wasted, and we use it for a purpose.”

Predicting demand in a dynamic way

The hospital is collaborating with Microsoft on multiple projects with the goal of unlocking the value of its data. One of the first projects to use AI is an algorithm to predict bed space utilisation. 

Claire Liddy, Director of Innovation at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, explains the team has created an algorithm that is learning from data, “to predict how many patients at different severity levels, how critically ill they are, how many will need admission that day… and we’ve been able to model that through now so we can predict forward in a dynamic way using Microsoft Power BI.”

A strong partnership with Microsoft

The use of AI in healthcare comes with additional concerns, especially around data security. Alder Hey is taking a thoughtful approach to the programme design, with a view to getting the ethics, governance and standard operating procedures right. This makes partnering with a technology partner with experience in the space an important advantage.

"Microsoft is an outstanding organisation. They provide such an integrated platform. Everything from Azure, to the Internet of Things, to machine learning,” says Liddy. “We have now placed AI as one of our top three strategic priorities... and there is a long pipeline of problem statements we are hoping to take forward.”