The healthcare sector, particularly tertiary-care hospitals, face an ever-increasing amount of pressure due to evolving demands aided by the growing population and unforeseen pandemics. Mounting healthcare needs directly impact patients' overall experience; including prolonged waiting periods, delayed appointments, mired level of services, and hindered ability to provide proper care. With the unprecedented global health crisis we have faced in recent years, the international healthcare system has been pushed to reform and transform. In this light, artificial intelligence (AI) and emerging technology have become increasingly prevalent, propelling efforts to improve patient care, solutions, and overall healthcare outcomes. Furthermore, the wider acceptance, and even promotion of smart technology, amongst clinicians, as a tool for informed clinical decisions has helped streamline operations, improve outcomes, and improve patient and staff satisfaction.

Machine learning and artificial intelligence (ML and AI) have been at the heart of the King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Centre's (KFSH&RC) response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Saudi Arabia, accelerating a digital transformation journey that has been underway since the start of the 21st century. The rapid development of a highly integrated COVID-19 digital support machine learning platform, using predictive analytics to optimise the hospital's operational response and patient care delivery, has been a game-changing experience for the organisation – and in particular, for the Healthcare Information Technology (HIT) team led by CIO Dr Osama Alswailem. "The hospital as an organisation is transitioning from'smart' to'intelligent' systems," says Alswailem. "Before the pandemic, we were already moving from interoperability, data warehousing and simple analytics into more machine learning projects from genomics to 3D printing. When COVID happened, we shifted our focus from the defined use cases that we had into a platform that could use real-time, multi-dimensional data to enable focused organisational decisions." Adapting to the uncertainties of a rapidly developing pandemic demanded a platform that could be integrated with every internal and external operational and clinical function, including the hospital's Integrated Clinical Information System (ICIS), bringing real-time data to care providers and administrators so that decisions could be made and resources such as beds and devices allocated based on the latest knowledge.