Best Smart Hospitals Products

In the realm of acute care, inefficiencies permeate the healthcare journey, stemming from disjointed processes and outdated technical infrastructures. The consequences manifest in adverse events for patients and staff. Smart hospital solutions offer a promising avenue to address these structural challenges by providing real-time visibility into patient journeys and optimizing care team collaboration.

Operational efficiency

The Acute Care journey is fraught with inefficiencies from a process standpoint, characterized by siloed, inefficient and ineffective technical infrastructure. Existing processes, policies, and EMRs currently lack the collaboration needed to drive out silos and increase planning and communication amongst providers, leading to inefficiency intake, care coordination, and care transitions. Consequently, patients experience the drawbacks of these effects with hand-off related adverse events and longer stays in the ICU. 1, 2 Implementing smart hospital solutions can address these challenges by providing real-time visibility into patient journeys and optimizing care team collaboration, thereby improving care coordination and maximizing time management. Advanced tools such as AI-based alarm management systems can reduce alarm fatigue, enabling clinicians to focus solely on critical alerts and practice at the top of their license. 3 This integration of smart technologies can help streamline patient flow, optimize intake processes, and reduce transfer delays, ultimately enhancing through-put and shortening the length of stay for patients by empowering clinicians to utilize their time and engage more effectively with patients.

Resource optimization

Legacy hospital infrastructure is not optimized for increasing patient and staff needs, leading to exacerbated capacity issues, staffing constraints, and suboptimal patient experiences. As a result, hospitals can often face challenges in ensuring that the right resources are available at the right place and time to provide timely and appropriate care to patients. This lack of resource optimization can lead to hospitals struggling with managing patient flow due to limited patient turnover and scarce availability of resources. 4 Smart hospital solutions can mitigate these challenges by optimizing resource utilization through technologies like Real-Time Location Systems (RTLS) to gain more visibility into their supply chains and anticipate disruptions of their assets and medical equipment. Through this, hospitals can not only achieve significant cost savings, but also improve efficiency and staff experience, allowing hospitals to reduce wasteful usage, prevent loss, and allow staff to locate equipment quickly. 5 By streamlining workflows and reducing the shortage or misplacement of equipment, hospitals can encounter a significant improvement in cost saving, staff morale, and clinical outcomes.

Patient satisfaction

Modern healthcare faces significant challenges in patient engagement and satisfaction with siloed access to care, confusing layouts, and prolonged wait times. These problems persist due to the service quality and fragmentation of hospitals, leading patients to interact with nearly 60 employees in one stay alone. 6 Moreover, overburdened health systems struggle to meet patient needs effectively, leading to extended waiting periods and longer lengths of stay before discharge. 7 Smart hospital solutions can meet patient expectations by featuring seamless technology integrations with interactive equipment, digital signage, and mobile apps that allow for a curated and highly personalized end to end experience. 8 By embracing a patient-centered approach, hospitals can overcome existing gaps in access to care, reduce wait times, and enhance patient experiences from admission to discharge.

The process of developing a smart hospital environment requires a curated integration of carefully chosen technologies that caters to patient and staff experiences. To ensure the success of a smart hospital initiative, it is essential for health systems to articulate their overarching objectives and establish a clear roadmap for the selection and implementation of smart technologies within a hospital infrastructure.

1. Design the patient experience from a human-centered approach. Begin by designing from the lens of the patient and staff experience, considering what is important to them. Before finalizing blueprints, physically walk through the experience to ensure that placements of the solutions are appropriate to facilitate the desired experience.
   
   
2. Accommodate for consumer diversity. Ensure accessibility to all people entering the hospital regardless of language or physical ability. Design an experience and journey that is inclusive of everyone in the facility.
   
   
3. Build on top of your foundational technologies. Identify the current assets and technology you have to determine what new solutions can be built on top of them in order to optimize resources and capabilities.
   
   
4. Do not underestimate the infrastructure. Verify that the existing hospital infrastructure is capable of accommodating the requirements and integrations of new smart hospital technologies.