Outpatient Wait List Management - Helmut worked together with ABTRAN to develop a tool for waitlist management for Outpatient services in multiple hospitals of the HSE. Wait times for appointments at hospitals are a severe problem in Ireland, with routine appointments for many specialities having wait times over 15 months. The OWL (Outpatient Wait List) tool helps hospitals to improve resource use, and identify strategic investment choices that maximise reductions in the wait times. This is done by finding the best balance between capacity reserved for urgent patients, and capacity used for routine procedures. It also allows for work to be spread more evenly between consultants, and between multiple hospitals in the same region, by allocating mobile patients to departments with spare capacity. The application was tested with data from two hospitals in the southern region of the HSE.

The team also developed a tool to visualise and analyze public waiting list data of the NTPF (National Treatment Purchase Fund), which provides a national overview of wait times across all HSE hospitals, as well as detailed analysis for all departments and all specialities across the country.