Toronto hospital network crowdsources AI ideas to ease staff burden
Trillium Health Partners held its first AI contest and received more than 60 submissions from hospital staff looking to solve operational problems. The winning idea came from an emergency department manager who developed a tool to automate staff scheduling.
Jackie Rodricks, clinical manager of Credit Valley Hospital's emergency department in Mississauga, won the "AI for Better Health Catalyst Challenge" with a scheduling system that could cut seven hours of daily administrative work down to minutes.
Her team currently spends hours each day manually coordinating staff assignments. The AI tool integrates workforce data, staff qualifications and assignment guidelines to automate the process while still requiring human review before implementation.
"This really puts not just me, but my whole leadership team, back at the bedside," Rodricks said.
Rodricks began developing the tool independently but entered the contest to gain technical support and resources to build it properly. Trillium Health Partners will now fund the project and has already begun implementation work.
Scaling beyond emergency care
Sam Sabbah, chief of staff at Trillium Health Partners, said the hospital network faces mounting pressure in emergency departments across its locations. The contest was designed to surface solutions that address these challenges.
"We can't just keep asking for more beds, more physicians and more nurses. It's not going to keep up with demand," Sabbah said. "We need to change the way we approach these problems, we need to work smarter in addition to working harder and AI has a very major role to play in this."
Sabbah served on a seven-member judging panel that included health care, technology and philanthropic leaders.
The scheduling tool could extend beyond emergency departments. Intensive care units, inpatient wards, mental health units and cardiac intensive care units face similar staffing challenges. Building the system in the emergency department first allows the hospital network to refine it before scaling to other areas.
Trillium Health Partners plans to make the contest an annual event as patient volumes continue to rise.
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