Transforming emergency care with an intelligent operations platform
Summary
How Momentum helped a leading clinical technology provider build an integrated emergency operations platform—streamlining patient care from dispatch to bedside, reducing wait times, and improving clinical outcomes.
Setting the scene
"“Sometimes the most critical patient is still waiting in the parking lot.”
That insight—shared by the emergency lead during our early discovery sessions—captured a painful reality in emergency departments: frontline teams operate under pressure, often without the digital support they need. Ambulances arrive without coordination. Registration is still paper-based. And patient prioritization relies more on gut instinct than real-time data.
Our client, a forward-thinking healthtech company, set out to change that. They weren’t looking to build just another app—they envisioned a connected clinical observation platform that would transform emergency care from the moment an ambulance is dispatched to the moment a patient is stabilized.
What we were up against
Emergency departments faced a web of disconnected processes that slowed down care and put patients at risk:
No Real-Time Transport Coordination
Ambulances arrived without digital alerts, leaving staff to manage incoming patients blindly. A national pilot for email-based notifications only added noise—not clarity.
Manual Registration Workarounds
Frontline teams spent critical minutes re-entering the same patient data across paper forms and siloed systems, delaying care and increasing the risk of error.
Gut-Driven Queue Management
Without clinical data to guide prioritization, patients were treated in the order they arrived—not based on urgency—leading to inefficiencies and missed red flags.
Fragmented Monitoring Systems
Vitals, meds, lab results, and alerts were scattered across disconnected tools. Clinicians had to jump between systems during the most time-sensitive moments.
Five things that had to work perfectly
Through in-depth workshops with client's clinical and operational teams, we defined five critical objectives:
Build a real-time transport coordination system to process ambulance notifications and trigger immediate actions for incoming patients.
Replace paperwork with digital registration that syncs automatically with hospital information systems.
Introduce intelligent queue management powered by mathematical models to optimize patient flow based on acuity, available resources, and wait times.
Create a unified clinical dashboard that brings all patient monitoring into one streamlined interface—enabling faster, more informed decisions.
Engineer a resilient system architecture that functions reliably online and offline, while integrating with existing hospital infrastructure.
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How we got it done
We took a modular approach, designing each component to address a specific stage of emergency care—while ensuring seamless data flow and real-time synchronization across the system.
Transport Coordination
Instead of merely displaying ambulance notifications, we built a smart coordination layer that automatically parses incoming alerts, extracts critical patient information, and calculates urgency indexes. Patients are grouped by priority in a real-time dashboard, enabling teams to prepare trauma bays, mobilize staff, and initiate care before the ambulance even arrives.
Registration & Queue Management
We replaced paper-heavy workflows with a digital intake system that pre-registers patients from ambulance data or captures their information via ID scans on arrival. From there, the system assigns patients to one of three dynamically updated queues — Immediate, Urgent, or Delayed—using real-time Poisson-based modeling that continuously adapts to demand and acuity.
Clinical Observation
Optimized for tablet use, the observation module integrates directly with monitoring devices to bring all critical data into a single, unified dashboard. Vitals, lab results, medications, and alerts are displayed in real time, while the system automatically detects parameter shifts and flags potential complications—helping staff respond faster, with better information at their fingertips.
Under the hood
To bring SOR to life, we engineered a robust technical foundation tailored to the realities of emergency care. Every layer—from interface design to infrastructure—was optimized for speed, resilience, and interoperability in high-stakes clinical settings.
Web-Based, Mobile-First Interface
We built a responsive web application optimized for tablets and desktop, giving staff fast, flexible access to patient data on whichever device fits their workflow—essential in fast-moving, high-mobility environments.
FHIR/HL7 Integration Layer
To ensure seamless connectivity with hospital systems, we developed a powerful integration layer supporting healthcare data standards like FHIR and HL7. This enabled communication with HIS, LIS, RIS, and pharmacy systems—without requiring infrastructure overhauls.
Real-Time Data Processing
For both clinical monitoring and ambulance alerts, we implemented a high-performance data pipeline capable of ingesting, processing, and displaying information within milliseconds—delivering the speed clinicians need to act in critical moments.
Queue Modeling Algorithms
We embedded M/M/c queuing theory models into the system to intelligently route patients based on severity, arrival patterns, and resource availability—replacing intuition-based triage with predictive, data-driven decisions.
Offline-First Architecture
Because reliable connectivity isn’t always guaranteed, we designed the system to operate fully offline. With local data sync and autonomous functionality, it keeps emergency workflows running even when networks go down.
What it took to get there
We rolled out the system in three tightly sequenced phases—each building on the last to ensure clinical relevance, technical stability, and smooth adoption by frontline staff.
The first milestone was transport coordination. We integrated with the national ambulance notification system and developed algorithms to automatically prioritize incoming patients based on urgency, helping staff allocate trauma bays and prepare resources before arrival.
Next, we tackled digital registration and queue management. Paper-based intake was replaced with a streamlined, data-synced process that enabled faster onboarding. Patients were automatically triaged into Immediate, Urgent, or Delayed queues using real-time modeling—a leap forward from gut-feel prioritization.
The final phase focused on clinical observation. We connected the platform directly to monitoring devices, consolidating vitals, labs, meds, and alerts into a single, real-time dashboard. Clinicians could now make faster, more informed decisions—without switching systems or re-entering data.
To ensure the system could withstand the pressures of real-world use, we ran extensive simulations with realistic patient flows and stress-tested performance under peak emergency loads.
The complexities beneath the surface
Building for emergency care means addressing more than just technical requirements—it means navigating clinical realities, legacy systems, and unpredictable infrastructure. Here’s how we tackled some of the toughest challenges behind the scenes:
Legacy System Integration
Integrating with existing hospital information systems wasn’t straightforward. Instead of pushing for costly infrastructure upgrades, we built a flexible integration layer that supports both modern FHIR protocols and legacy HL7 interfaces—ensuring broad compatibility across healthcare environments.
Clinical Workflow Adaptation
Emergency clinicians operate on finely tuned instincts. Our goal wasn’t to replace those—it was to support them. By shadowing frontline staff and running iterative design sessions, we developed interfaces that fit naturally into existing workflows, enhancing decision-making without adding friction.
Offline Functionality
Network reliability can’t be taken for granted in emergency care. We implemented a robust offline-first architecture with local data storage and automatic resync—keeping operations running smoothly even when connectivity drops.
What we achieved together
The impact of the platform was immediate and measurable.
Ambulance wait times dropped by 50%, as critical patients were identified and prioritized before arrival. Digital registration and automated data sync improved document processing speed by 75%, while algorithm-driven triage boosted the accuracy of identifying high-risk patients by 90%. With real-time monitoring consolidated into a single dashboard, clinical response times improved by 40%.
Perhaps most importantly, staff reported spending more time with patients and significantly less time navigating fragmented systems or completing repetitive paperwork.
"We didn't just get new tools—we got new reflexes. This changed how we think about emergency care. We now have clarity when everything feels urgent, and our data is exactly where it belongs: at the center of care decisions."
Emergency care moves fast. Technology should never slow it down.
By redesigning a complex clinical operations platform—from dispatch to bedside—we helped our client turn fragmented workflows into one integrated system. The result? Faster decisions, better coordination, and safer care for every patient.
If you're building tech for high-pressure clinical environments, we can help you make it work—securely, seamlessly, and at scale.
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