Zeitschrift für Gesundheit und medizinische Informatik

Addressing Emergency Department Overcrowding Through a Systems Approach Using Big Data Research

Abstract

Noreen Kamal*,D Kelly Barnard,James M Christenson,Grant D Innes,Pamela Aikman,Eric Grafstein,Julian Marsden

The emergency department (ED) is the canary in the coalmine for the healthcare system. The issues that EDs are facing are having adverse effects, and their causes can be better understood by viewing the ED as part of the entire health and social system. Policy decisions can be supported by sharing data across various health service areas, ministries and census data. Big Data research can support the integration and correlation of variables in large volumes of diverse datasets. Furthermore, the science of Visual Analytics can provide interactive visualization of the data to support evidence-based healthcare policy.