Walk through the emergency department at Michigan Medicine, and you’ll see more than just medical professionals in motion. Behind the patient monitors and triage stations are teams of students observing, analysing and working to fix the system from within. For patients, long wait times can feel like an added layer of pain, and for student engineers and nurses, it’s a real-world challenge they are now helping to solve.At Michigan Medicine’s adult emergency department, student interns from the University’s Center for Healthcare Engineering & Patient Safety (CHEPS) are working alongside clinical staff to improve the system — not just for doctors, but for the patients who need care the most.As reported by The Michigan Daily, the hospital’s emergency department has become a hub of both urgent medical care and high-stakes decision-making. With nearly 100 beds and an ever-growing influx of patients, the space is often stretched beyond capacity. Emergency department chair Dr. Prashant Mahajan explained that delays have worsened since the pandemic, driven by increased patient volumes, more complex illnesses, and a lack of available community care options. These issues mirror what is happening in hospitals across the country, but at Michigan Medicine, part of the solution is being built with the help of students.
When engineering meets healthcare
Within Michigan’s highly collaborative healthcare ecosystem, students are working directly with hospital consultants and clinical staff to identify operational challenges. Among them is Laney Hoving, a rising senior in the university’s School of Nursing and a systems engineering intern at CHEPS. His team is focusing on critical diagnostic delays, including the long waits patients face for imaging tests.“Patients often end up waiting hours for these tests,” Hoving told The Michigan Daily. “And it is typically only after these tests are interpreted that meaningful interventions can be initiated or disposition can be determined.”To address that, he and his team ask two key questions: Is the right patient getting the right test at the right time? and Is the process itself streamlined? When the answer to either is no, the team steps in to find data-backed solutions.This isn’t theoretical work. It’s practical, and it’s happening in real time. Hoving explained that engineers bring a unique perspective to emergency care, one that allows them to see patterns and inefficiencies that clinical teams, overwhelmed by the urgency of the moment, may not be able to spot.“Everyone is dealing with the next crisis,” he said. “And there’s not always time to look back at how everything fits together.”
Solving problems in real time
Some of these student-led insights are already improving care. One early breakthrough came when the CHEPS team realised that many patients with chest pain, though clinically stable, were being held overnight while waiting for a stress test. These patients were occupying beds that could have been used for more critical cases.According to the Michigan Medicine business consultant, the issue turned out to be a scheduling mismatch. Most stress test orders were placed in the afternoon, but the test slots were available only in the morning. Once the team adjusted the time slots to match patient flow, wait times for those tests dropped significantly.This is a small operational change, but it made a meaningful difference for both patients and hospital staff. It also illustrated the kind of real-world impact student engineers and consultants can have when they are embedded within a functioning healthcare system.
A systems problem, not just an ED issue
Dr. Mahajan and his colleagues are clear about one thing: the challenge is not limited to emergency departments. Instead, it reflects a larger problem in the way healthcare systems function, especially as patients turn to hospitals when community-based care is inaccessible. Many arrive not because of an immediate emergency, but because they have nowhere else to go.To help manage that demand, Michigan Medicine has introduced several structural changes. These include triage providers stationed at the front of the emergency department, a Hospital Care at Home program for stable patients, a new 26-bed medical short-stay unit, and the soon-to-open D. Dan and Betty Kahn Health Care Pavilion. Still, the hospital’s leadership believes that improving physical space alone isn’t enough. That is where data and design come in.In partnership with the university’s College of Engineering, the hospital is using AI tools, data science, and student-led research to uncover delays, redesign processes, and improve how the system responds to pressure.
Learning by doing
For students like Hoving, this is more than just internship experience. It is early exposure to how complex and high-stakes healthcare delivery can be. It also underscores the value of interdisciplinary work, where nursing students, engineers, and healthcare consultants work side-by-side toward a common goal.While the headlines often focus on overburdened emergency rooms and long wait times, the real story includes the student teams behind the data dashboards, observing providers, and recommending changes based on evidence.As Mahajan said, solving emergency department inefficiencies requires looking at the broader system. And at Michigan, students are proving they are ready to help build it better.TOI Education is on WhatsApp now. Follow us here.
