Master’s student in management science Sindhura Anumolu finds that in hospitals, figuring out which beds are open and can take a patient is a paper-intensive process with a slow turnaround time. So she built an app to help.
HelioOps is an AI-powered hospital bed platform that informs nurses when a bed is available for an incoming patient.
“This is a tool for nurses who are always on the move and need some kind of system that is easily accessible for them instead of going and sitting in front of the computer and keep updating what is happening with every patient,” Anumolu said. “[I] came up with something simple which they can hold in hand and do it with a click, a button or just one tap.”
There wasn’t always a hospital bed ready in time for her mom during hospital visits, which struck her as an avoidable issue.
Hospitals beds may seem like a niche topic in medicine compared to, say, curing disease. For Anumolu, who lost her mother in 2022 to cancer, the story hits closer to home. There wasn’t always a hospital bed ready in time for her mom during hospital visits, which struck her as an avoidable issue.
“When we were taking her for chemotherapy visits to hospitals, most of the time it was scheduled, but most of the time we would wait for hours to get [a] bed,” Anumolu said. “There was one instance where she was put in the blood bank because there were no [beds] available, and doctors and nurses were going back and forth. It was really frustrating.”
Anumolu’s initial goal was to be a doctor, but she couldn’t get through the medical exams. Instead, she came to the U.S. and joined the master’s program at UTD. In one of her classes, she came across a case study from Singapore in which health care workers optimized bed management during COVID-19. Anumolu said that was when things began to fall into place.
“Me and Professor [Mandar] Samant both thought to do research on this, and see where exactly the problem exists, and we did [it] for U.S. hospitals,” Anumolu said. “After doing that, we thought, ‘Let’s create some solutions out of it,’ and that’s when I came up with HelioOps.”
Instead of trying to solve the problem by constructing new beds, Anumolu’s idea hopes to make sure the beds that already exist are used as efficiently as possible.
We need to have a tool which optimizes the existing solution — whatever we have, we need to use those resources first.
— Sindhura Anumolu, management science graduate student and HelioOps founder
“In the U.S. … there is something called construction loss [where] we need approval to construct something new,” Anumolu said. “By the time you get that approval it takes five to seven years, and by [that] time we are in a bigger crisis. The facts say that by 2032 we will be short of 150,000 beds and you really can’t keep constructing beds. We need to have a tool which optimizes the existing solution — whatever we have, we need to use those resources first.”
Anumolu said that a day in the life of a nurse goes as follows: The first thing they do is figure out which patients are ready for discharge, and then they begin to coordinate with multiple departments on calls to release the patient and ready the bed for its next use. They also must move across multiple units to find open beds while constantly inputting data. This entire process can take from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., she said.
What we are trying to do is ease this a bit and start [the] discharges by 11 a.m.
— Sindhura Anumolu
“Everyone is frustrated, it’s all chaos everywhere,” Anumolu said. “What we are trying to do is ease this a bit and start [the] discharges by 11 a.m. The moment nurses enter the hospital, [they] will be able to see [their] mobile app, which shows which patient is ready for discharge or which patient has a chart not ready. [They] will be able to see all that in one single app.”
AI has yet to be extensively integrated into health care. But Anumolu finds AI’s presence in her project to not pose any issues to patient health or hospital operations.
“We are not doing clinical decisions here, we are not diagnosing anyone or prescribing any medicine, so that is one reason why people won’t be hesitant,” Anumolu said. “It’s making the job easier for the nurse, and it’s not replacing [them] because [they are] the one at the end of the day who [have] to click it or [they] are the one who have that human interference in between and take the decision.”
Being an entrepreneur has its challenges. More than two-thirds of startups never generate any return on investment. Anumolu said that she too has faced those moments; her biggest challenge so far has come from making the app simplistic instead of bogged down in details. As she spoke with nurses and various hospitals, Anumolu said they wanted something that was easy to use.
“When you are in a low point you have to look at different personas and see if I am facing this problem, how about the other person, how will they think [or] how will they react to it,” Anumolu said. “And that I think helps a lot.”
Anumolu plans for HelioOps to be tested in a few pilot experiments where she can collaborate with a hospital and see how her app performs. Based on that, she hopes to expand the app to other hospitals. Despite nearing the end of her master’s program, she doesn’t see an end to what she is doing: developing the app, talking to the people that’ll use it, vying for venture capital.
“When you are really passionate about something, you find that gap [of time], and you still work on it, ” Anumolu said. “This is something which I was really, really passionate about, I [love] the idea. I am enjoying every bit of it [and] this isn’t going to stop.”