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KNIPS - a collaboration for better surgery planning.
Published: 22. nov. 2022
Author: Ivar Hukkelberg
– Operasjoner er selve hjertet i sykehusdriften. Vi skal utvikle et produkt som lar sykehusansatte planlegge og utnytte kapasiteten bedre, sier Olav Willumsen Haugå, daglig leder i Deepinsight.
Through the innovation partnership KNIPS, Nordland Hospital, DIPS, and Deepinsight will develop a new solution for surgical planning based on AI and data. Deepinsight contributes important experience in the use of optimization models on health data and will therefore lead the development of the solution with support from DIPS.
DIPS has over 30 years of experience with IT in healthcare, and their EHR system, DIPS Arena, is the foundation of IT solutions in the country's hospitals. Collaboration with DIPS is therefore essential for KNIPS to be a success.
We are ambitious, and the first version of the product is expected to be ready in six to nine months.
What is KNIPS?
KNIPS is a collaborative project aimed at creating better solutions in and around DIPS for Nordland Hospital.
KNIPS stands for Kernel + Nordland Hospital = Innovation & Patient in Sentrum.
The name also refers to the goal of getting solutions out to users quickly for practical testing. We are impatient, and by snapping, we symbolize the desire to get solutions out to users quickly and frequently.
A product people love to use
The development kickoff occurred in September 2022 with insight interviews of employees at Nordland Hospital. It became clear that this is highly complex due to a large number of unforeseen situations in the hospital, which means that large parts of the workday are spent on "firefighting," making it a challenging exercise to plan ahead. In addition, both healthcare personnel and administration find that the tools they use are not good enough. This aligns well with what we have observed in other hospitals.
– This is far from an ideal workday when we know that unforeseen situations disrupt planned surgeries every day. A canceled operation is very expensive and places extra strain on patients, explains Haugå.
The KNIPS group is therefore looking into how hospitals can think innovatively to plan more flexibly to help hospitals keep the promises they make to patients.
– This means delightful mathematics. We need to get to the root of the problem and build a product that people love to use and that makes everyday planning for those scheduling surgeries as optimal as possible, says Haugå.

COLLABORATION PROJECT: Olav Willumsen Haugå looks forward to diving into the mathematics with the KNIPS project. – It is undoubtedly a complex issue – exactly what we love to work on at Deepinsight, he says.
Is a new planning model the answer?
In the ongoing innovation process, participants are discussing how Nordland Hospital can rethink surgical planning in entirely new ways.
One example raised is how the digital grocery retailer Oda solves logistics with home delivery. Just as new patients enter a hospital, new customers order groceries from Oda. To effectively utilize their resources, Oda optimizes the drivers' routes as customers place orders.
The delivery time becomes more and more precise as the delivery window approaches, and Oda updates customers continuously via text message.
– The example from Oda shows that there are other ways to plan than the traditional timetable, explains Håvard Thøgersen, COO at Deepinsight and project manager for KNIPS.
It also demonstrates that it is possible for hospitals to plan in a manner that accounts for the unpredictability of patient care and hospital operations.
– The goal is to put the planners at the center by digitizing and modernizing their workday and the experience for patients. To achieve this, making information about patients and capacity accessible is crucial, Håvard continues.

EXPENSIVE: It is costly to operate an operating room. Therefore, it is especially important to optimize resource use.
Good results in Denmark
There are also good examples from the healthcare sector. In Denmark, they have developed and implemented an optimization model that predicts treatment time to treat patients in the neurosurgery department. Such patients must be operated on within one to two weeks and thus move ahead in the queue, altering the established timetable in the operating rooms.
Hospitals know that these patients are coming, but not when. Since the model was implemented, they have been able to anticipate needs better, and the number of canceled operations has decreased by a whopping 77 percent, while productivity in the hospital has increased by 20 percent.
KNIPS is also inspired by the international expert in data-driven process optimization, Maartje Zonderland. She is responsible for implementing the models at the hospital in Denmark.
Deepinsight partnered with her earlier this year to learn from her experience in developing and using data models on administrative health data.
A solution hospitals will use
It is no coincidence that Nordland Hospital is involved in the KNIPS project. Deepinsight's sister company, DIPS, was born in the basement of Nordland Hospital in 1985. This has led to Bodø having the country's largest development environment within e-health.
The KNIPS project aims to serve as a kind of innovation hub to find and test good solutions in an authentic environment. There are undoubtedly several directions that can be explored, making the insight work with employees at Nordland Hospital particularly important.
– We need to conduct thorough insight work among users to develop solutions that truly address the challenges of surgical planning, says Thøgersen.
Deepinsight leverages the full breadth of the company in the KNIPS collaboration with software developers, data scientists, designers, UX designers, and project management.
– The most important thing is that we create a product that Nordland Hospital actually needs and will use. We are therefore working closely with DIPS to ensure that the solution will be available in the DIPS system, concludes Thøgersen.
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