Comment by renonce

> That warning showed the patient's white blood cell count was "really, really high," recalled Bell, the clinical nurse educator for the hospital's general medicine program.

I’m not sure how an alarm for “high white cell count” should have had so much impact. Here in China once the doctor prescribes a finger blood test, we sample finger blood after lining up for 15 minutes, and the result is available within 30 minutes. The patient prints the results from a kiosk and any patient who cares enough about their own health will see the exceptionally high white cell count and request an urgent appointment with the doctor for diagnosis right away. Even in normal cases we usually have the doctor see the report within two hours. Why wait several hours?

> While the nursing team usually checked blood work around noon, the technology flagged incoming results several hours beforehand.

> But in health care, he stressed, these tools have immense potential to combat the staff shortages plaguing Canada's health-care system by supplementing traditional bedside care.

This sounds like the deaths prevented by this tech are caused by delays and staff shortage and what this tech does is to prioritize patients with serious issues? While I appreciate using new tools to cut deaths, it looks like the elephant in the room is staff shortage?