Our COVID-19 Clinical Hub offers a powerful example of how expert analysis turns data into knowledge that can enable us to make a difference for the people who need it most.

The Clinical Hub team needed to be able to assign an acuity rating for COVID-19 cases to rank how urgently they needed care. The team knew workloads would be high as the Omicron pandemic peaked and many of the clinicians contacting COVID-19 cases would be speaking to patients they didn’t know, lacking background knowledge of their health status.

Using pre-existing data about the demographics, vaccination status, and comorbidities of patients enrolled with Mahitahi Hauora, we created an acuity tool that assigned a score to each person.

If someone in the community became COVID positive, this tool meant the Hub team knew immediately if their care needed to be prioritised. The team could effectively focus their limited resources where they were most needed.

Later, the acuity tool was further adapted to pre-calculate eligibility for therapeutics once these became available, saving clinicians valuable time and ensuring eligible patients would be offered the medication they needed.