Command Centre

Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is proud to have worked alongside GE Healthcare to create Europe’s first hospital command centre powered by artificial intelligence. 

The centre, recently launched at Bradford Royal Infirmary, will transform how the care we deliver is delivered and organised as the numbers of patients at our hospitals continues to increase. 

Using AI, it will provide a clear, instant and real-time overview across of our 800 beds and help staff make quick and informed decisions on how best to manage patient care. 

Up to 20 highly-qualified clinical staff now monitor a ‘wall of analytics’ which constantly pulls in streams of real-time data from multiple systems at the hospital. 

Advanced algorithms will help staff anticipate and resolve bottlenecks in care delivery before they occur, recommending actions to enable faster, more responsive patient care and better allocation of resources.

Data is displayed on multiple high-definition screens in the Command Centre – as well as tablets and mobile devices – providing 24-7 support to busy medical teams across the hospital.

The Command Centre is also playing a key role in helping us to reduce the time a patient spends in hospital when they are ready to leave,  increasing the proportion of patients who are admitted, transferred or discharged from A&E within four hours, and ensuring all our patients are always treated in the wards best suited to manage their often complex care.  

More than 96 per cent of bed capacity at BRI is used regularly and the hospital’s A&E department attracts 125,000 attendances each year, up 40 per cent in the last 10 years.

But the Command Centre is already allowing us to boost the efficiency of our operations, and take pressure off the shoulders of our dedicated staff.

Our people have also been involved in the design of the new centre: from form and functionality to what will be displayed on the wall of analytics – a series of screens that bring together real-time data from multiple systems across the hospital.

Command Centre staff are now monitoring a constant flow of real-time and predictive data which will also help cut length of stay, alleviate the need for additional wards and beds – especially during peak winter times, and reduce cancellations for non-emergency surgery.

Mark Ebbens, European Command Centre Lead at GE Healthcare, said: “Command centres help to orchestrate the delivery of care across the organisation, bringing consistency to processes, prioritising actions, eliminating waste and predicting tomorrow’s pressure points.”

• Patients will benefit from the software which will support decisions made by clinical teams, based on a wider-range of real-time information. It will ensure patients get the best care, and could improve their experience and lead to a quicker discharge
• Staff will be able to anticipate and resolve bottlenecks in delivering care for patients before they cause problems, and avoid them in the future
• Staff will monitor a constant flow of real-time and predictive data which will help cut length of stay, alleviate the need for additional wards and beds – especially during peak winter times – and reduce cancellations for non-emergency surgery

• Staff and clinicians will be able to spend more time delivering care, and less time organising care
• Information from the Command Centre will enable data-driven improvements and evolutionary change across the Trust
• The Command Centre programme will help meet the vision of the Trust to decrease length of stay, alleviate the need for additional wards and beds – especially during peak winter times, and reduce cancellations for non-emergency surgery.

Trust to launch Europe’s first AI-powered Command Centre

For media enquiries about the Command Centre, please contact:

Sarah Smith                                                           Tanya Tarry
01274 383901                                                         01274 364700
sarah.smith@bthft.nhs.uk                               tanya.tarry@bthft.nhs.uk