Analytics Saves Lives During the COVID-19 Crisis in Chile.

The article focuses on the collaboration between the Chilean Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Sciences, Technology, Knowledge and Innovation, the Instituto Sistemas Complejos de Ingeniería (ISCI), and the telecommunications company ENTEL to apply operations research (OR) and data analytics in managing the COVID-19 pandemic in Chile. This partnership developed innovative tools that informed key aspects of Chile's pandemic strategy, including monitoring lockdown effectiveness through granular mobility data, optimizing ICU bed allocation with predictive models, expanding testing capacity via group testing and active screening of asymptomatic cases using a BAC index, and implementing a nationwide serology surveillance program to guide vaccine booster policies. These data-driven initiatives contributed to preventing an estimated 1,253 to 2,952 deaths and saved over 300 million USD in healthcare and productivity costs by January 2022. The project faced challenges such as coordinating multidisciplinary teams, ensuring data privacy, and communicating sensitive information, but its methodologies and infrastructure have potential applications beyond the pandemic in public health and other sectors.