Development of a Multipurpose Dashboard to Monitor the Situation of Emergency Departments (eCREAM-UC2)

Development of a Multipurpose Dashboard to Monitor the Situation of Emergency Departments. An Observational Prospective Study

An emergency department (ED) is a healthcare service that provides the first clinical assessment and treatment to patients with various acute conditions. These departments, however, are often overwhelmed by the large volume of patients. As a consequence, ED crowding has become a global concern and has been correlated to reduced timeliness and effectiveness of care and increased patient mortality. Concerning input, 20% to 30% of patients are brought to the ED by ambulance; the remaining are self-presenting for the vast majority. Notably, non-urgent conditions characterize a high proportion of all ED visits worldwide, and almost all of these visits involve self-presenting patients. Increasing the awareness of these patients about the mandate of EDs and the real-time situation of the neighboring emergency departments has the potential to reduce the self-presentation of patients with minor, non-urgent conditions. Such patient empowerment can be achieved through a dashboard. Concerning throughput, working in the ED requires emergency physicians and nurses to treat many patients at once while maintaining situational awareness of the surroundings. This is especially true for the head of the department, but it also holds for all physicians. It can be crucial, for example, for physicians to know if there is a bottleneck in the flow of the entire patient care process, such as a particularly high average waiting time for radiology reporting or cardiologic consultation. The availability of this information allows countermeasures to be put in place to regain efficiency. All this can be achieved through dedicated dashboards automatically fed from various information system. In addition, appropriate dashboards also enable health policymakers to monitor specific epidemiological phenomena, such as the emergence of certain infectious diseases, in a timely manner.

Study Overview

• Status: Recruiting
• Conditions: Emergency Medicine
• Intervention / Treatment: Other: no intervention

• Study Type: Observational
• Enrollment (Estimated): 162000

Contacts and Locations

• Study Contact: Name: Chiara Pandolfini; Phone Number: 0039 02 39014 253; Email: chiara.pandolfini@marionegri.it
• Study Contact Backup: Name: Giulia Ghilardi; Phone Number: 0039 035 4535 389; Email: giulia_irene.ghilardi@marionegri.it

Study Locations

• Italy
  • Torino, Italy
    • Recruiting
    • Ospedale San Giovanni Bosco
    • Contact: Franco Aprà; Phone Number: +39 0112402349; Email: franco.apra@aslcittaditorino.it
  • Vercelli, Italy
    • Recruiting
    • Ospedale Sant'Andrea
    • Contact: Sergio Tartaglia; Phone Number: +39 0161 593111; Email: srtartaglia@gmail.com

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: Adult; Older Adult
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No

• Sampling Method: Probability Sample

Study Population

All adult patients who arrived at participating emergency departments between January 1, 2025 and December 31, 2025

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• Adult
• Arrived at emergency department between 1 January 2025 and 31 December 2025

Exclusion Criteria:

- None

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Number of groups / cohorts

1

Cohorts and Interventions

Group / Cohort	Intervention / Treatment
Adults who attended the emergency department	Other: no intervention; no intervention

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Daschboards	Develop three different control panels for three different end-users, specifically: Dashboard for citizens; Dashboard for healthcare providers; Dashboard for healthcare policymakers The aim is to extract the needed information from heterogeneous sources and to feed the dashboards according to the needs of the end-users. On the whole, for citizens, the dashboard will be designed to empower them to choose the most appropriate ED to attend or to consider a different, more relevant or more efficient, health service; for healthcare providers, the dashboard will provide a clear and immediate picture of the ED situation in terms of patient flow and workflow; for healthcare policymakers, the dashboard will provide the ability to monitor specific phenomena of interest, such as ED crowding level, possible incidence of pre-specified epidemiological phenomena, availability and timeliness of primary and secondary patient transfers, ambulance offload delays, etc.	September 2024 - September 2027

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research
• Collaborators: Fondazione Bruno Kessler; Astir s.r.l.; Orobix Life S.r.l.
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Guido Bertolini, MD, Istituto Di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): September 22, 2025
• Primary Completion (Estimated): June 1, 2026
• Study Completion (Estimated): February 1, 2027

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: April 9, 2024
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: April 12, 2024
• First Posted (Actual): April 18, 2024

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): May 20, 2026
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: May 18, 2026
• Last Verified: May 1, 2026

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Additional Relevant MeSH Terms: Pathologic Processes; Disease Attributes; Emergencies
• Other Study ID Numbers: 8780_UC2

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: YES
• IPD Plan Description: The anonymized data derived from this study could be shared for secondary use in the context of research projects.
• IPD Sharing Supporting Information Type: STUDY_PROTOCOL

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No
• product manufactured in and exported from the U.S.: No