How to Leverage Smart hospitals to immediately save lives and boost productivity

According to Data Bridge Market Research, by 2027, Smart Hospitals Market will know a significant growth to account for USD 102.31 billion at a CAGR of 20.2% in a forecast period of 2020 to 2027. This market is massively growing with increasing awareness among health practitioners and patients regarding smart hospitals’ benefits.

Technological enablement, digitization, and automation drive various industries’ growth, and healthcare is no exception. Its immediate needs (e.g., cost control and efficiency optimization) and longer-term goals (higher accuracy, greater efficiency, and better outcomes) are some of the factors that foster the adoption of smart hospitals by integrating a range of new technologies into care delivery: artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, precision medicine, virtual reality, internet of things (IoT), enabled devices, etc. Additionally, increasing investment by the government and emerging economies’ growth is expected to provide new and broad opportunities within the smart hospital market.

According to McKinsey&Company, Adopting digital technologies in healthcare will better assist in cost savings of more than ten percent of overall annual healthcare expenses in most OECD1 countries.

What are smart hospitals? Are there any examples?

Smart hospitals are technology-enabled hospitals that optimize, redesign, and/or create new clinical processes, management systems, and even infrastructure. These are provided by the underlying digitized networking infrastructure of connected devices to provide a valuable service or insight for improved patient care, experience, and operational efficiency. Thanks to the healthcare industry’s digital transformation, smart hospitals increase productivity and enable better patient satisfaction and flexibility.

Smart hospitals exist in many countries over the world. Here are some examples:

Estonia is the first country to centralize the creation of the register of medical data and electronic medical systems, according to Electronic Health Records (EHR). The state that established this system’s development requires all medical institutions to use it.
Latvia has about 350 reporting forms since the time of the Soviet Union. They simplified the system, decreased the workflow to 35 forms, and built a single centralized system.
In Denmark and Norway, hospitals are connected to nationwide Electronic Health Records and send all data to the state register.

Smart Hospital Advantages

Smart hospitals’ advantages include streamlining the work process, enhancing healthcare decisions with greater data, increasing customer satisfaction by establishing effective communication between patients and healthcare practitioners, and ensuring that machines operate effectively. Additionally, Smart hospitals decrease costs by saving energy and power sources when specific spaces are not used.

Patient satisfaction can play a crucial role for both patients and healthcare institutions. According to a study performed by the American Society for Healthcare Engineering, a friendly environment could speed patients’ recovery to be discharged an average of 2.5 days earlier. Smart hospitals can improve patient satisfaction by providing apps and building management systems that will allow the patient to call the nurse, control temperature and lighting, etc.

These smart healthcare institutions help to protect patient health, not only by providing treatment but by providing a safe environment for recovery. According to the World Health Organization, Decent air movement can decrease the transmission of healthcare-acquired infections and can be an efficient step to promote patient safety and healing. The standard airflow design is based on air changes an hour; nevertheless, the WHO recommends that it should be designed per patient to reduce infections, which can be easily achieved through smart hospitals’ infrastructure.

Additionally, Smart hospitals are helpful for automation and increasing productivity in administration tasks; they also help ensure effective management of medicine and other supplies, from obtaining, securing, storing, and keeping to tracing medicine utilization, especially for products that have a timestamp on their usage.

Driving Factors behind the evolution of smart Hospitals

Search for quality and better clinical outcomes.
According to research done in the United States, 5% of outpatient examinations are inaccurate, examinations errors contribute to around ten percent of patient deaths, and roughly 20 percent of orthopedic surgeons will perform a wrong-site surgery at some point in their career.

Approximately about 400,000 Americans die each year because of medical errors. Other reports estimate the misdiagnosis rates could be even higher in developing countries.

When powered with AI, automation, and other advanced technologies, hospitals can improve treatment accuracy and significantly reduce error probability while respecting patients’ privacy.

The increase in patients’ awareness

The growing use of the internet and technology made patients change how they are approaching the healthcare system. Fueled by deep awareness, they seek to become more informed and engaged in the process instead of passively seeking medical diagnosis and treatment. Thus, healthcare providers are changing their systems to become patient-centric. Advanced technologies can enable patients to have possible online consultations, multidisciplinary team support, and other new care delivery standards to assist hospitals in becoming more patient-oriented.

Establishing robust health management practices.

Patients are increasingly shifting their healthcare plans to more complete systems that start before treatment; this includes their overall wellness and lifestyle, illness prevention, and recovery. Thus, a sharp decrease in costs and expenses takes place for healthcare payers. This shift is occurring in many countries around the world. For example, Singapore has instituted an organization to encourage residents to embrace healthy living habits by supporting evidence-based information and illness prevention plans at homes, workplaces, and schools.

The Massive growth of Advanced technologies and smart devices

Smart hospitals are also driven by the availability of infrared sensors along with machine learning systems that make use of sensor input to train tailored AI applications in health care. These sensors can be extremely beneficial inside and outside the hospital setting, providing a wide range of applications ranging from verifying whether a person washed their hands at the hospital entrance to alert clinical team members to threatening health crises without constantly going from room to room.

Conclusion

In summary, the healthcare system will continue its shift to powerful technology-enabled hospitals for a decentralized care provision and improved patient-centric innovative approaches. Smart hospitals will offer a complete healthcare ecosystem for both care seekers and providers, focusing instead on a range of in-house services and connect with more extensive care services flexibly and efficiently.

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