The COVID-19 pandemic has driven the digital transformation of all hospitals and medical institutes. To respond to the impact of the pandemic and changes to patient behavior during OPD visits, China Medical University Hospital is adopting two major strategies to speed up the digital transformation, including: 1. Introducing the Microsoft Azure platform by collaborating with five medical center level domestic hospitals to develop the most advanced AI application of medicine to significantly shorten the genetic sequencing calculation time of 160,000 people so the correlation between genetic sequence and disease progression in patients can be assessed more effectively; 2. Visualize Power BI data analysis and apply directly to medical diagnosis and treatment monitoring, which can not only elevate the diagnosis energy of physicians but also allow for the effective surveillance and control of drug use and infection. This technology can save the lives of patients in the ICU.

CMUH applying Azure cloud technology in the application of precise medicine and upgrading the IT environment across the hospital

To speed up digital transformation, CMUH has introduced Microsoft Azure cloud technology to construct a public cloud to share systems open to external users directly, i.e., the official website, health educational videos and OPD reservation page. More sensitive and confidential systems with private information, i.e., patient personal information and medical records, will be managed in the private cloud. No matter whether the public or private cloud, all systems are equipped with backup mechanisms to secure and ensure all data is safely used and operated. 

In addition, CMUH is applying the structure of Federated Learning (FL) to conduct training on the Azure AI model and the application of smart medicine. Azure AI is the most advanced AI application of medicine under the collaboration of the US National Institute of Health (NIH) and five medical center level domestic hospitals. Azure AI is universally applied to the brain, heart, cancer, genetics, critical care and other specialist areas to use Azure PaaS technology in gene imputation sequence analysis. This AI application for precise medicine allows CMUH to stay on the global stage of high-end technology and advanced medical applications.

Superintendent Der-Yang Cho, China Medical University Hospital, said that Microsoft Azure can not only meet the demands of the microservice structure extension and expansion, but also the needs of security and privacy, which are crucial in the field. It can also provide public and private mixed cloud services as well as IaaS and PaaS to SaaS cloud services. CMUH is pleased to have the opportunity to collaborate with Microsoft and gradually shift the existing medical system to a public cloud platform. By way of high speed calculations and big data analysis, more real time and visualized data analysis results can be provided to physicians to shorten the time for medical decisions and allow patients to obtain suitable and excellent professional diagnosis, treatment and medical care. 

General Manager Hsien-Guo Pan of the public affairs business group of Microsoft Taiwan said that assisting customers to complete digital transformation through technology empowerment is always the goal for Microsoft and it’s happy to see that CMUH can elevate medical efficiency and quality through Microsoft technology. In addition, data-supported decision-making can become a tool to help improve medical care for everyone. It’s expected to have more collaborations with CMUH in other areas in the future to contribute even further to improving medical efficiency in Taiwan. 

From facilitating business effectiveness to saving the lives of patients 

The CMUH ICU team makes Power BI work well

Commercial intelligence was originally used for making business decisions by data analysis and data visualization so it focuses on management, indicators, performance and cost, etc. The CMUH ICU team has applied Power BI to monitoring patients’ physiological condition to save patients’ lives and transform Power BI from a business tool to a complete solution that saves lives.

According to statistics, there are around 10% of adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) patients with a 35% mortality rate in the ICU. Implementation of a lung protective ventilation strategy and other measures may reduce the mortality rate effectively, but the dilemma is that the ARDS diagnosis will need a lot of clinical information and data. Physicians may have different thoughts on the standard strategy for individuals so the timing to implement the lung protective ventilation strategy may be missed. 

Dr. How-Yang Tseng of ICU, CMUH, explained that we can leverage the assistance of Power BI to diagnose ARDS, and even use it for further monitoring patients’ physiological data and treatment. When monitoring the oxygen providing level and oxygen saturation index, ARDS patients need a very high level of oxygen due to their severe condition so the oxygen supply curve needs to be sustained at a high level, whereas the oxygen saturation curve should remain in a trough. If the required treatment and approaches can be provided in time, including the lung protective ventilation strategy, when the oxygen supply level curve is moving in a downward trend and the oxygen saturation level curve is going upwards to form the “survival cross”, then it means ARDS patients have passed the critical point and their lives have been saved. As Power BI can assist with quality surveillance since the beginning of this year, the ARDS standard care implementation rate has increased by 22.1%, and preliminary results have observed a decrease in mortality rate during the hospitalization period by 22.4%.

In addition, CMUH is applying Power BI to build a “quality surveillance dashboard of drug administration” to control drug administration status and special drug multi-inspection in real-time nursing power surveillance to review and improve the conditions of delayed drug administration by cause analysis. Furthermore, the “catheter placement and fever monitoring dashboard” has been introduced to monitor the real-time conditions of patients with fever, infection, catheter placement, bacteria culture, antibiotic use and so on so cluster infections can be prevented. It’s expected to leverage the universal pioneer smart medicine to allow patients to receive the required medical care at the right time.