An increasing number of enterprises are investing in smart hospital solutions. These healthcare solutions integrate the digital and physical assets of hospitals into a single framework that connects clinical and business procedures and assets.
The so-called “smart hospital” is characterized by many technologies that enable hospitals to become more efficient and address specific difficulties.
As experts say, the industry could exceed $63 billion by 2023, stakeholders must understand what the future holds.
This article explains the concept of a smart hospital, its benefits, and how to build one.
What is a Smart Hospital?
Simply put, smart hospitals are the healthcare facilities that use clinic softwares to optimize, redesign, or build new clinical processes and management systems. It uses digital networking infrastructure of interconnected assets to provide a valuable service or insight that wasn’t possible or available before.
Such patient management software ultimately helps to improve patient care, experience, and operational efficiency.
There are three essential layers in a smart hospital: data, insight, and access. Together, these three components help improve the quality of care.
As the world population is anticipated to reach 8.6 billion by 2030, the number of people needing healthcare services is proliferating. As demand continues to rise, patients also have higher and higher expectations for the quality of the healthcare they receive and the services they are given.
With rising demand, laws and rules are getting stricter and harder to understand. All these show that the healthcare system is under more and more stress. Smart hospitals are crucial as they help people access quality health care at lower costs.
What Are the Benefits of Smart Clinic Software?
To give patients the kind of connected care they expect from the best hospitals, smart hospitals make it easy for different technologies to work together. The following are some of the main benefits of the synergy of these clinic management software systems.
1. Integrated Healthcare
Integrated care lets patients get the proper care at the right time and place, anywhere in their community. Smart hospitals can achieve this by connecting with other important healthcare centers around their patients.
These health centers include specialty clinics, primary care providers, and other healthcare venues. The connectivity between these systems and people allows swift medical responses that ultimately improve how patients feel.
2. Real-Time Data Access
Smart hospitals work with lots of data. These massive chunks of data generate insights that can be used to make faster decisions, give more personalized care, and cut costs. However, the main benefit of smart hospitals is how the data from sensors and other digital assets can be fully integrated. This makes it easier for all stakeholders to see how medical resources are used and to handle changing caseloads.
3. End-to-end Security for data
One of the major concerns in healthcare systems is how to protect client data. Smart hospitals however solve these problems to a large extent. These hospitals have access to unique defense systems that protect client information, protect patient privacy, and make sure that smart hospitals follow industry standards.
4. Computing in Real-time
Real-time computing is essential when you need to understand data quickly and accurately. Smart hospital solutions allow a high level of coordination within and between networked medical devices that enable easy data transmission in the simplest forms. With these solutions, healthcare providers can give more accurate diagnostics at the fastest possible time.
How Can You Build a Functional Smart Hospital?
Now that we know what smart hospitals are and what they can do for patients and people who run healthcare businesses, we need to figure out how to build one.
There is no set architecture that can confer ‘smartness’ on a hospital system at once. Every hospital has unique needs. Therefore, to build an effective smart hospital, your smart hospital solutions should be built to meet the needs of everyone involved.
The following are some ways smart hospital solutions can solve some common traditional hospital issues.
1. Smart Diagnosis with Big Data
Neural networks are a network of algorithms that can analyze large amounts of data quickly and accurately. When used in smart hospitals, neural networks may aid in the diagnosis and assist in reducing human error.
Predicting the course of many illnesses using data might lessen the likelihood of patients acquiring new problems and minimize the strain on healthcare systems.
Strategic data utilization may also improve process standardization. By examining past procedures, doctors and nurses can create a more efficient operating room schedule and boost team efficiency.
2. Asset Tracking with Practice management Software
Studies suggest that nurses spend around 40 hours a month looking for missing equipment. Sadly, 16% of the time, they cannot find these tools.
Smart hospitals can solve this problem by tracking equipment via Bluetooth-based iBeacons, RFID, or QR tags on a dashboard. This system can display which assets are disinfected and ready to use and which are still being prepared.
Experiments are ongoing on how sensors can be used to find medical staff and verify they follow hospital cleanliness protocols.
3. Interconnected Medical Devices (IoT)
Smart hospitals’ data-centric medical treatment and “sparse” clinical procedures make the Internet of Things crucial. IoT medical devices gather healthcare data while data analytics tools analyze it (typically paired with cloud computing for data storage and sharing).
Health wearables with sensors, GPS asthma inhalers, video conferencing tools, or even smartphones with mobile health applications may readily capture clinical data and patient input.
This enables smart hospitals to offer 24/7 patient monitoring and consultation in-house and remotely.
4. Artificial Intelligence and Robotics
Industry leaders say that artificial intelligence (AI) is the key to improving healthcare quality. As a result, many smart hospital systems incorporate emerging AI and robotics technology to enhance healthcare delivery. Some of the methods of using these systems are as follows:
Chatbots
Chatbots are computer software that uses machine learning and NLP to simulate human dialogue while communicating with clinical personnel and patients. Chatbots and virtual assistants may help smart hospital personnel with various jobs.
For instance, they can optimize contact center routing. They can also offer 24/7 care to patients. An example is the Virtual Nurse Molly, deployed by the British NHS to monitor and assist people with chronic diseases.
Robotics
Smart hospitals now use AI-powered robotic surgeons for unaided surgeries. Robots can also offer assistance in lab sample delivery and room cleaning. An example is Moxi, a robot assistant at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas.
Conclusion
Smart hospitals represent the future of medicine. With smart hospital systems, hospitals can improve their efficiency and overall effectiveness. Since the field is still in its developmental stages, there is still a lot to learn and understand.
Also, there is no defined architecture for what an ideal smart hospital should look like. Therefore, if you want to make your hospital smart, you can pick as many of the above ideas to improve your hospital efficiency for more positive results.