Mini-project
Healthcare & Hospitals
Hospital bed occupancy forecast
Forecast bed occupancy, including seasonal outbreaks, to plan beds and staff.
The brief
Hospitals run out of beds during fever seasons and have empty wards at other times. Forecast occupancy with seasonal patterns and outbreak periods, so the administrator can plan beds and staff rosters weeks ahead. Good looks like: a forecast that beats last year's pattern, back-tested over past seasons, with a plan for peak weeks.
What you will build
- Prepare occupancy time series
- Explore seasonal and outbreak patterns
- Compare seasonal-naive, Prophet and gradient-boosted forecasts
- Back-test over past seasons
- Turn forecasts into a staffing and bed plan
Free, open data to build it with
- NHS bed availability and occupancy ↗ NHS England
Check each dataset's licence before you publish your work. Your mentor gives your team its own version of the brief (data, scope or region), so every team's project is its own.