For those of us in Australia, where we’ve been lucky enough to keep the spread contained (for now) we still have time to work out how to cope with it when (not if) it arrives.

I had time on my hands, but I’m not a healthcare or essential services worker, so I struggled to think how I could apply my rather abstract skills to the cause. So, when the call went out from Anaplan for Master Anaplanners to help plan the potential impact of COVID-19 in all sectors of the economy, I seized the opportunity with both hands. It seemed to me that a simple user-friendly model to predict the number of hospital beds (and other resources) required would be the most useful thing I could contribute.

And so, the Hospital Resource Planning model was born.

I was lucky enough to have some enthusiastic colleagues at Cornerstone and PMsquare with exactly the right skills to help me get this model built in the six days we were allowed – Brent Gorham, a healthcare supply chain SME, who provided the high-level design, Paolo Malafaia, a fellow Master Anaplanner, and Reza Makouei, an Anaplan Model Builder and Data Scientist.

As it happens, we already have interest from a public health body here in Australia who are looking at a rapid deployment of the model, so I already feel that we’ve achieved something useful!