The COVID-19 Hospital Impact Model for Epidemics (CHIME) is a tool that provides up-to-date projections of what additional resources will be required in certain hospitals during the COVID-19 outbreak.
It shows informed estimates of how many patients will need hospitalization, ICU beds, and mechanical ventilation over the coming days and weeks will be crucial inputs to readiness responses and mitigation strategies, according to the Predictive Healthcare team at Penn Medicine, which developed the project.
The tool uses a SIR Model, which computes the theoretical number of people infected with a contagious illness in a closed population over time.
Hospitals can enter information about their population and then run a standard SIR model to project the number of new hospital admissions each day. This will result in best- and worst-case scenarios to assist with capacity planning. The Doubling Time parameter in the SIR model defines how quickly a disease spreads.
The tool was originally designed for making projections in Philadelphia, but is capable of providing input on other cities through a switch of parameters.
The project is currently in the testing stage and is looking for help in project management, DevOps professionals to ensure that the dashboard can handle the increase in traffic, and Python developers, since it is the predominant language used in the project.
Project updates in realtime are available here.
