The CHIME (COVID-19 Hospital Impact Model for Epidemics) App, launched on March 15, was developed by Predictive Healthcare at Penn Medicine to assist hospitals and public health officials understand hospital capacity needs as they relate to the COVID-19 pandemic. CHIME enables capacity planning by providing estimates of total daily (i.e. new) and running totals of (i.e. census) inpatient hospitalizations, ICU admissions and patients requiring ventilation. These estimates are generated using a SIR (Susceptible, Infected, Recovered) model, a standard epidemiological modeling technique. The model has been reviewed by several epidemiologists including Michael Z. Levy, associate professor of epidemiology, department of biostatistics, epidemiology and informatics at the Perelman School of Medicine.

CHIME allows individuals to prepare their hospitals, cities and regions for the looming crisis. It specifically allows users to forecast the expected number of in-hospital patients and daily admissions so that they can estimate the impact in their location and when they will need to have mitigation strategies in place.

CHIME is being used by numerous organizations. There has been outreach from all around the US and the world and the app has had traffic from over 150 countries. More features and enhancements are actively being implemented as users identify additional needs.

For more information and to view the app, visit https://penn-chime.phl.io/