While telehealth has been used for years to serve remote Canadian communities, virtual visits to the doctor hadn鈥檛 caught on much in urban areas 鈥� until recently.
鈥淲hen COVID hit, we couldn鈥檛 see patients鈥� on site, except for urgent cases, says Adrian Dancea, head of the pediatric cardiology division at the Montreal Children鈥檚 Hospital. 鈥淪o overnight we were kind of entering a new paradigm. COVID gave a big push to telehealth.鈥�
But that push also raised questions: How do care providers and patients assess the quality of telehealth services? And how could doctors, nurses and therapists be made more comfortable using the technology available to them? 鈥淚t鈥檚 a culture change for both doctors and patients,鈥� Dr. Dancea notes.
不良研究所 grad students Omar Chehab, Katia Sory, Victoria McKeown and Kyle Gomes are helping the Children鈥檚 find answers to those and other questions related to the pandemic. All are members of the 2019-2020 cohort of the Desautels Faculty of Management鈥檚 Master of Management in Analytics program. The intensive one-year program emphasizes experiential learning, including a capstone project in which students team up with community organizations to solve a data and analytic problem.
With many workplaces shut and much of Canada鈥檚 economy reeling from the public-health crisis, the MMA this spring shifted the focus of the year-end project. To help local businesses and other organizations adapt, students would work with them remotely to lend a hand.
鈥淭he MMA gives our students the chance to work with large corporate clients and smaller community clients,鈥� explains MMA program director Shoeb Hosain. 鈥淭his year, we increased our efforts and committed funding to ensure we could give back more to NGOs, non-profits and small businesses facing challenging situations.鈥�
Expanding telehealth
Before the pandemic, telehealth accounted for just 2% of outpatient appointments at the Children鈥檚, a 不良研究所-affiliated pediatric teaching hospital. In the coming years, the hospital aims to raise the proportion to around 30%. But that average is likely to mask wide variations between different areas of medicine.
鈥淭here are certain areas where telehealth has a role that should be expanded; in other parts, telehealth isn鈥檛 appropriate or can only go so far,鈥� Dr. Dancea says. 鈥淲e need to define the needs more carefully, and we have to look critically at the quality of the service we鈥檙e providing by telehealth.鈥�
Surveying doctors and patients
That鈥檚 where Omar Chehab鈥檚 project comes in. Gathering information from hospital personnel since June, he has developed digital questionnaires that will help determine satisfaction levels among both patients and care providers. 鈥淧atients value different things than doctors,鈥� notes Omar, who studied marketing as an undergraduate at the American University of Beirut.
For example, commuting time to get to the hospital and waiting time for appointments are important to working parents with school-age children. 鈥淭elehealth will really help鈥� deal with those sorts of issues, Omar says. Another example: videoconferencing could make it easier for doctors or nurses to talk with different family members 鈥� a grandmother, for example 鈥� who may have valuable information to share about a patient.
The survey for doctors will also identify 鈥減ain points鈥� where investments might improve satisfaction levels. During the recent, unexpected proliferation of telehealth appointments, for example, some doctors weren鈥檛 comfortable using Zoom because they hadn鈥檛 been trained adequately. Others relied on their personal phones for consultations, because they hadn鈥檛 been supplied with laptops.
To understand what factors most affect satisfaction levels among patients and health-care providers, Omar has applied a machine-learning algorithm that he learned in the MMA program.
Building a dashboard
For her part, Katia Sory focused on the business aspects of expanding telehealth services. With a visualization tool she learned to use during the corporate MMA project, Katia built a data dashboard designed to help Montreal Children鈥檚 Hospital staff predict the volume of telehealth appointments over the next five years. She also provided analyses of the investments required to scale up services, including estimates of how long it would take for those costs to pay off through increased efficiencies.
Originally from Burkina Faso, West Africa, Katia moved to Montreal seven years ago to study at HEC Montr茅al, where she earned a BBA degree. She entered the MMA program after working for two years as a business analyst at Bombardier Inc. After this experience with the Montreal Children鈥檚 Hospital and an eight-month project at Pratt & Whitney Canada, 鈥淚鈥檝e learned that AI can be implemented across all types of industries to solve business problems,鈥� Katia says.
Managing PPE supplies
The other area in which Children鈥檚 Hospital sought help from the MMA program involves personal protective equipment, such as the masks, gowns and gloves that were in such short supply in Canada and elsewhere this spring.
鈥淧re-COVID, individual units all owned their own PPE,鈥� explains pediatric intensive-care doctor Tanya Di Genova. The intensive care unit, for example, would order a specific amount of equipment per month. But once COVID hit, the 不良研究所 Health Centre 鈥� which comprises several hospitals, including the Children鈥檚 鈥� gathered up PPE from all units and stored it centrally. While the Children鈥檚, itself, didn鈥檛 treat a large number of COVID patients, the pediatric hospital used PPE at much higher than normal rates in order to protect frontline workers from possible infection.
鈥淎t the unit level, we didn鈥檛 have a good handle on what we were using 鈥� which is very important to predict needs,鈥� says Dr. Di Genova, who worked with MMA students Victoria McKeown and Kyle Gomes to collect information needed to address that challenge.
鈥淐OVID changes the needs for a hospital in terms of what PPE they鈥檙e using and how fast they鈥檙e burning through PPE,鈥� Victoria says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not just the N-95 masks, it鈥檚 also procedure masks, gowns, and so on. And it鈥檚 changed a lot about the way they鈥檙e recording this information, as well.鈥�
Identifying usage patterns
She and Kyle identified patterns in PPE usage, and developed a model to calculate how many masks, gowns or gloves will be used. The calculator is designed to help plan orders and keep the hospital well supplied. 鈥淚f we can help them order PPE so they have a better, more stable supply for the doctors, nurses and the other team members, then they鈥檙e more able to do their jobs,鈥� Victoria says. 鈥淲e鈥檒l be helping them help the community.鈥�
One big challenge for the students: 鈥淲e鈥檝e never met our clients in person on this project,鈥� says Victoria, who worked for two years at a Canadian consulting firm before starting the MMA program. 鈥淲e鈥檙e managing everything through Zoom calls, phone calls, emails.鈥�
During the corporate projects that Kyle and Victoria worked on earlier in the MMA program, data processes were well-established and the students focused on narrowly defined problems. At the Montreal Children鈥檚 Hospital, by contrast, 鈥渨e really had to go from start to finish, trying to help them get to where they need to be,鈥� Kyle says. His eight-month MMA corporate consulting project with software company Autodesk in Montreal gave him confidence in tackling the hospital project, says Kyle, who is from India and came to 不良研究所 after completing an undergraduate degree in Business Administration at Boston University.
New cohort to pursue projects
The four students presented their findings to the Montreal Children鈥檚 Hospital personnel in early August, and Drs. Dancea and Di Genova came away impressed.
鈥淚n a relatively short period of time, the students were able to gather the information, get comfortable in an area that they鈥檙e not very familiar with, and come up with sophisticated solutions that are immediately applicable,鈥� Dr. Dancea says.
The community project marks the end of the one-year MMA program for most of the current students. But students from the incoming class of 2021 cohort participated in recent virtual meetings, giving them an opportunity to begin thinking about ways to build on the projects next year.
The partnership between the Children鈥檚 and the MMA program 鈥渘eeds to continue and needs to expand,鈥� says Dr. Dancea. 鈥淭his should only be the beginning."