A Q&A with researchers in the Emergency Care Systems Lab
A new research and innovation hub led by the BerbeeWalsh Department of Emergency Medicine is dedicated to making emergency care safer, smarter and more efficient by addressing some of the biggest challenges in modern emergency care — issues like disruptive technology and health systems that were never designed to handle the complex demands placed on emergency departments (EDs) today.
The Emergency Care Systems Lab (ECSL) was founded by Dr. Brian Patterson, associate professor of emergency medicine, and Dr. Manish N. Shah, professor and department chair, to bridge research and operations in rethinking emergency care. Led by Patterson, with Shah serving as executive director, ECSL brings together physicians, engineers, data scientists, and researchers working in the ED to create integrated solutions that improve patient care, clinician well-being, and health system coordination.
The lab recently welcomed Hanna Barton, PhD, a human factors engineer, as Research Director. Barton’s expertise in human-centered systems design has been pivotal to shaping ECSL’s direction and early initiatives.
“We are building infrastructure to identify real challenges faced by frontline staff and develop solutions using data science, health tech and systems design,” Barton says. “We’re focused on the seamless integration of research and operations, not just on creating synergies.”
Patterson and Barton discuss ECSL’s mission, work and impact.
What is your background?
Brian Patterson (BP): As an emergency medicine physician and UW–Madison faculty, my work focuses on patient care, clinical informatics and health systems research. When I’m not working in the ED, I use data science and health care technology to improve emergency care delivery, particularly by optimizing clinical workflows and decision-making.
Hanna Barton (HB): My expertise lies in field research methods, health information technology (HIT) evaluation, and human-centered design. My work leverages systems engineering to design learning health systems that reliably deliver safe, equitable and patient-centered care for all.
What major challenges is emergency medicine facing, and what is your vision for confronting them?
BP: Emergency medicine has never been a more critical — or more strained — part of the health care system . Historically, EDs were built to handle life-threatening crises. Today, they have evolved into command centers responsible for navigating patients through an increasingly complex and fragmented health care system. This shift wasn’t strategic; it was a reaction to gaps in care. We’ve continually stepped up for our patients and supported our large care network, but health systems weren’t built to handle this level of strain.
Now, EDs face record-setting patient volumes, workforce shortages, and changing financial incentives, all while managing an unprecedented influx of new health technologies. We need a smarter, systems-based approach to make emergency care work better for everyone.
HB: The ED is often the true front door of the health system, especially for those who face barriers to primary care. While improving general health care access requires many solutions, the ED is uniquely positioned to address long-term health needs, like connecting patients to preventive care before conditions worsen. Health tech shows great promise here. With thoughtful design, it can truly support and empower our frontline staff.
What is the mission behind ECSL?
BP: Every day in the ED, we see inefficiencies that could be solved with better design. As a researcher and physician, I often notice a disconnect between innovation that is being developed in academia and the real challenges of providing frontline care. Emergency medicine might seem chaotic, but that doesn’t mean we can’t engineer smarter and more flexible systems that make care safer and more efficient. This will benefit patients, clinical providers in and beyond the ED, and health systems.
HB: As both health systems and medical care have evolved, EDs have increasingly been expected to do more without proportionate resources. New technologies promise to alleviate this burden but often fail to translate into practical solutions, largely because people from many different domains aren’t talking to each other enough or at all. ECSL exists to close that gap — ensuring innovations in health tech and data science actually improve emergency care delivery.
If a big part of the problem is people not talking to each other, how is ECSL addressing this?
BP: What makes ECSL unique is the integrative expertise we have brought under our umbrella, with domain experts from emergency medicine and other medical specialties, engineering, data science, design, and health services research — all synchronized to work on key challenges through the same lens.
Often, these teams operate in silos to solve different but interrelated problems. We’ve zoomed out to see the bigger picture, so we can work on overarching challenges together without sacrificing critical ground-level expertise. The combined expertise and transdisciplinary coordination of our Research Core and Leadership Team ensure that ECSL’s work is both clinically relevant and rooted in cutting-edge systems engineering.
HB: When people start talking, what seemed like a clear problem can get picked apart and redefined. A key part of ECSL is bringing diverse voices together and resisting the urge to jump to solutions. We begin by trying to truly understand what is driving an issue — that’s the systems approach.
How is ECSL turning academic research into real-world impact?
HB: One big challenge in health care is the gap between research and real-world practice. ECSL is helping to narrow this divide by embedding research into the clinical environment, where new ideas can be tested and improved quickly in real time.
What does that actually look like? We find areas in the ED where new research can improve operational workflows. Then we work closely with clinicians and hospital leaders to test and roll out solutions that improve patient care, boost efficiency and make work better for staff.
BP: Take our falls prevention initiative for older adults. Many older patients are at high risk of falling after an ED visit, but because emergency clinicians focus on acute care, we aren’t trained to think about referring older adults for preventive care, such as to a specialty clinic for patients who have mobility concerns due to age or health conditions. We developed a machine learning model that identifies high-risk patients and alerts providers, making it easy to connect patients with preventative care after discharge from the ED. This system is already active in our EDs at UW Health, helping to ensure patients receive timely interventions while reducing the administrative burden on clinicians.
What health care technologies is ECSL most excited about?
BP: We are particularly focused on the intersection of data science, automation and human-centered design. Health care generates vast amounts of data, but the challenge is turning that data into actionable insights. ECSL is working to refine AI-driven decision support tools and predictive analytics to optimize emergency care.
HB: One of the biggest obstacles isn’t just generating insights — it’s making them usable. That’s why we incorporate human factors engineering and implementation science into development so that new technologies will integrate seamlessly into existing workflows, without disrupting frontline care.
How can researchers and health care professionals collaborate with ECSL?
BP: We are always looking for collaborators across a wide range of disciplines. Interested researchers can email us at ECSL@g-groups.wisc.edu to inquire about joining our research core, a group that explores opportunities to expand emergency care systems research. While we use UW Health as a natural testing ground, we aim to scale our work nationally by developing implementation toolkits that allow other health systems to adopt our innovations.
The Emergency Care Systems Lab is led by Director Dr. Brian Patterson and Research Director Dr. Hanna Barton. Apoorva Maru serves as Program Manager. To learn more, please visit the Emergency Care Systems Lab.
*The “Preventing Future Falls in Older Adult ED Patients: Evaluating the Implementation and Effectiveness of a Novel Automated Screening and Referral Intervention” project is funded under grant number 1R18HS027735-01A1 from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).