Hey Reader,

🙋‍♂️ What is Care Traffic Control?

In this post we are going to offer a definition that is a more literal alignment with air traffic control than you may have seen. But first we want to give some background that might show why I chose this definition.

🪙 Who coined it?

• Dr. John Halamka, now with Mayo, in an interview with Fox Business in 2015.
• Vision was a command center with access to your "connected self" devices like smart watches, Fitbits, smart scales, BP devices and wearable EKG's.
• Caregivers are monitoring you remotely to keep you out of the hospital.

🏄‍♀️ Go with the flow

• Since then Care Traffic Control has centered on patient flow.
• New Hampshire DHHS is using it to prevent boarding of psych patients in the ED.
• HNS is using Care Traffic Control to speed up discharges.
• Teletracking is a CTC product focusing on patient flow.
• Maybe we should broaden the scope of Care Traffic Control.

🚶‍♂️ What is traffic

• With 10 years in Air Traffic Control, I think Care Traffic Control has an even more direct alignment.
• That alignment comes from the emergence of Location Based Services (LBS).
• LBS is like the radar in ATC.
• Motion is endemic to healthcare operations.
• Motion is a well-known source of waste.

📜 Real Time Healthcare

• In 2018, Gartner said "The real-time health system (RTHS) is a conceptual, operational and technology paradigm for the next-generation healthcare delivery organization (HDO). The RTHS transforms the HDO into an enterprise that is aware, collaborative, and smart. The RTHS assimilates real-time operational intelligence to achieve business objectives."
• Sounds a lot like what we want from Care Traffic Control.

✒️ Let's define Care Traffic Control

• Here we go: "Care Traffic Control is using situational awareness and automation to optimize mobile workflows across the enterprise."
• Let do some unpacking here.

⚗️ Breaking it down

• Situation awareness is used by people to make decisions in a short planning horizon.
• Awareness is found in context like LBS and other HIS systems.
• We want to emphasize automation as a fundamental property of CTC.
• CTC has human-in-the-loop automation that comes from digital twin.
• RTHC focuses on all operations, but CTC optimizes mobile operations.
• CTC is across the enterprise with connected workflows to remove bottlenecks.

🛣️ Journey not a puzzle

• This definition shows why the digital twin is so important.
• Each week in the newsletter we have been laying out the pieces.
• But this is a journey not a puzzle.
• There are valuable steps that can be taken right away
• I have received so much encouragement from many who are excited to get started.
• It starts with a model so let's build one together!

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Paul E Zieske ​Location Based Services Consulting ​​​