An Integrated Patient Triage and Capacity Recommender System for Robust Outpatient Department Service Delivery

The Sub-Saharan Africa has few and scattered healthcare facilities that are characterized with overcrowded waiting rooms, and error-prone manual capturing of patient data. However, through proper integration of technology, a healthcare system characterized by timeliness in both diagnosis and access to treatment is possible. This paper proposes an integrated patient triage and capacity recommender system for outpatient departments. The system performs multi-priority scheduling of patients in the various acuity levels based on vital sings, syndrome, chief complaint and time of arrival. The vital signs are captured by a kit of bio-sensors, whilst the syndrome and chief complaint are captured by a nurse by selecting the relevant list of options provided in the graphical user interface. Each acuity level corresponds to an approximated time that each patient can safely wait for treatment. The system further alerts the nurse when the capacity of the hospital has been reached for the day. This is possible since the system periodically checks whether the approximated total waiting time of patients in a queue exceeds the remaining operational time. Hence, a healthcare facility only admits patient load that can be assisted within normal operational time. Furthermore, informing patients of the facility’s capacity level can allow patients to visit nearby facilities where the patient load is minimal. This leads to reduced expenditure for the facilities due to elimination of overtime expenses.