Working with clinicians and nurses, and overseen by ethicists and Māori health leaders, 1000minds was used in New Zealand to create a tool to help clinicians prioritize COVID-19 patients for admission to intensive care units (ICUs).
During the Covid-19 crisis, many patients were expected to suffer from severe illness, with some likely to need intensive care with ventilatory support. Anticipating demand would greatly exceed supply, health experts came together using 1000minds to create a decision-support tool to prioritize patients for ICUs.
The tool aims to maximize the number of lives saved by prioritizing those who are most in need and most likely to benefit. Intensive care experts determined the criteria and appropriate weights, and social equity considerations were taken into account with the help of Māori health leaders and ethicists.
The tool will only be used if ICUs become overwhelmed. Fortunately for NZ, this has not happened, whereas it has happened in many other countries.
In response to the crisis, 1000minds published an outline of a general process for creating patient prioritization tools online and supplied examples of COVID-19 prioritization and decision-making tools in 1000minds software. You can modify these tools as needed to suit your requirements in particular settings.
Global applicability
In Italy, researchers implemented 1000minds in an application of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) for prioritizing non-critical COVID-19 patients for hospitalization, with a focus on low- to middle-income countries (LMIC).
LMICs often struggle with overcrowding and lack of resources, which would further exacerbate a pandemic. Such countries would therefore benefit the most from a patient prioritization tool.
The study concluded that at the start of a pandemic, when only limited information is available about a disease and national response plans have yet to be established, MCDA could be crucial in helping health systems tackle the crisis.
Media coverage
- I Dougherty, “Critical decisions”, He Kitenga 2020 – University of Otago Research Highlights
- N Jones, “Covid-19 coronavirus: Software to help doctors decide who gets an ICU bed”, New Zealand Herald, 25 March 2020
- (Paywall) N Jones, “Covid 19 coronavirus: NZ software to help decide who gets intensive care beds”, New Zealand Herald, 31 March 2020
Peer-reviewed publications
About the use of 1000minds for prioritizing patients for ICU and hospital admissions respectively.
- M Roy, P Hansen, T Sullivan, F Ombler, M Kiore & A Stapleton (2021), “Rapid development of a tool for prioritizing Covid-19 patients for intensive care”, Critical Care Explorations 3, e0368
- P De Nardo, E Gentilotti, F Mazzaferri et al and COVID-19 MCDA Group (2020), “Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis to prioritize hospital admission of patients affected by COVID-19 in low-resource settings with hospital-bed shortage”, International Journal of Infectious Diseases 98, 494-500
Covid-19 prioritization tools
You can read more about 1000minds tools for prioritizing Covid-19 patients and their impact in our case study, and quickly get started with a customizable example in the 1000minds app. For assistance in using these tools and adapting them to your own needs, please feel free to contact us.
Have confidence in your decisions
Want to create similar decision-support tools for your organization? 1000minds has 20 years’ experience working with clinicians and researchers to create valid and reliable systems for healthcare decision-making, including prioritizing patients for elective services, health technology prioritization, disease classification, disease R&D targeting, health preferences research, and more. See our health sector success stories.
The ‘secret spice’ behind our innovative approach is our award-winning, patented PAPRIKA method for conjoint analysis and multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM).
Curious about how 1000minds can help you? Sign up for our free trial or book a demo with our friendly team today.
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