LUKS: simplifying hospital processes with low-code technology

“What I’ve learned from this initiative is that technology needs to be adopted fast, especially in healthcare. If you sleep on it too long, it will be a hard awakening.”

Beat Sonderegger, Chief Medical Information Officer at Luzerner Kantonsspital is describing the importance of digital transformation for his organization – and the project that’s helping to accelerate it. 

“As one of the largest hospitals in Switzerland, we believe that technology is a key driver behind the success of our services,” he says. 

“By investing in digital solutions, we can improve both the way we empower our staff and how we treat our patients.” 

Identifying and implementing these solutions is something that Sonderegger – a senior physician turned CMIO – has made his primary mission at Luzerner Kantonsspital (LUKS). 

One that recently led him to discover low-code technology and use it to simplify operations – saving physicians precious time in the midst of the pandemic. 

“We operate in a sector where manual processes and inefficiencies are still very frequent and counterproductive,” he says. 

“That’s why we’re so excited about low-code solutions: they’re the perfect way to show healthcare authorities that technology can make our lives truly so much easier.” 

Crisis leads to opportunity

The largest non-university hospital in Switzerland, Luzerner Kantonsspital counts more than 100 clinics, departments and centers, as well as a comprehensive range of diagnostic and therapeutic services. 

“Digital transformation is something that we’ve been embracing for at least a decade,” says Beat Sonderegger. “We have a long-established, highly efficient electronic medical record, and have been implementing the Microsoft 365 suite for the past three years. 

“We were also one of the first hospitals in the world to implement video consultations – all by integrating Microsoft Teams with our EHR EPIC.”

As a recently appointed CMIO, Sonderegger has been looking to build on these solutions by innovating even more. 

“A crucial part of my job is interacting with my colleagues,” he says. “My key priority is to understand their problems and then translate them into tangible solutions.”

An opportunity to do so came up in 2021, at the peak of the coronavirus pandemic. “These were days when hundreds of patients would just show up at our emergency departments, seeking help,” he explains.
“And one of the treatment options we had was an antibody therapy that could help patients with specific clinical conditions reduce the risk of becoming seriously ill.” 

To help the over 280 hospitals in its network identify eligible patients, the Swiss Federal Office for Public Health had put together a set of guidelines that needed to be followed during triage. 

The move, however, turned out to be less useful than expected. 

“Those guidelines were extremely complicated and hard to understand,” recalls Sonderegger. “I remember spending one day in an emergency department and seeing my colleagues struggle to figure them out – losing so much time and feeling so frustrated. 

“We were desperate for a quick and easy solution that we could build to help them process them.” 

A low-code app to simplify processes during COVID-19

When Sonderegger and LUKS hospital turned to Microsoft and its partner Stratiteq in search for help, they had one simple request: a solution that would help simplify the triage process and allow doctors to make quick decisions when it came to selecting patients.

According to Kim Hedberg, Head of Client Delivery at Stratiteq, the Microsoft Power Platform and PowerApps were the natural answer. 

“The beauty of no-code and low-code apps is that they’re incredibly easy to build and use, and the turnaround is very quick,” she says. 

“And this is what we did with LUKS. In a matter of days we were able to put together an app with an incredibly easy user interface, and which simplified and automated all processes.”

"The app lived on LUKS’ intranet, which clinicians could easily access when needed. It consisted of a list of yes/no questions that clinicians had to go through to identify a patient’s eligibility for the antibody treatment."

Questions ranged from whether the patient was a confirmed COVID-19 case to their medical history and vaccination status and whether they required oxygen. 

“Based on their answers, the app then automatically worked out whether or not the patient can receive the treatment,” she explains. “This made the entire process more efficient, less paper-based and more automated. All while delivering a highly simplified user interface.”  

The start of something much bigger

In the two weeks that it remained active, the app helped LUKS staff operate hundreds of patients, significantly supporting the hospital in its pandemic response. 

“This was really an eye opener for us,” says Beat Sonderegger. “The solution Stratiteq built for us has helped reduce the time we spent in the decision-making progress, allowing our physicians to focus more on the patient.”
A testament to this success was the positive feedback that Sonderegger received from his staff – as well as the attention this caught through the healthcare network in Switzerland.   

“I’ve received many calls from colleagues just thanking us for the app, and that’s really what we aimed to achieve,” he continues. “All we wanted was to make things easier for them.”

The results have been so convincing that now Sonderegger is looking for new ways to use the Power Apps, planning to create a Center of Excellence for Power Platform. 

“We’re currently preparing to host an App-in-a-Day workshop where can figure out new ways of using PowerApps,” he continues. 

“At the same time, we’re looking to incorporate more and more Microsoft solutions into our system – from building a data warehouse and platform with Power BI to expanding our use of Azure.”

It’s a goal that LUKS hospital is hoping to achieve not only by investing in technology, but also by driving cultural change among its peers.

“There is no digital transformation without a mindset shift,” he concludes. “Whether you’re focusing on data or other technologies, it's definitely a matter of changing behaviors.

“We hope this initiative will trigger it both within our staff, but also in the wider Swiss healthcare community.”