By definition, Smart hospitals are those that optimize, redesign or build new clinical processes, management systems and potentially even infrastructure, enabled by underlying digitized networking infrastructure of interconnected assets, to provide a valuable service or insight which was not possible or available earlier, to achieve better patient care, experience and operational efficiency.
The most important component for smart hospitals is the ability to provide a valuable service of insight, which was simply not possible or available earlier. This is what makes a hospital a step further from being just digital, making it truly smart. Simply digitizing, or making the hospital paperless (although a great achievement) is not sufficient. We see current implementations of digital solutions in hospitals as steps in their journey to become smart. From exploratory implementations to an intermediate stage, to finally becoming smart where hospitals have a complete alignment of clinical processes and management systems.
The smart hospital framework involves three integral layers – data, insight and access. Data is being collected even today, although not necessarily from all systems in a hospital, but is not integrated together to derive ‘smart’ insight, which can be done by feeding it in to analytics or machine learning software. This insight must be accessible to the user – a doctor, a nurse, facilities personnel or any other stakeholder, through an interface including a desktop or a smartphone or similar handheld device, to empower them to make critical decisions faster, improving their efficiency.
There are three areas that smart hospitals address – operations, clinical tasks and patient centricity. Operational efficiency can be achieved by employing building automation systems and smart asset maintenance and management solutions, along with improving internal logistics of mobile assets, pharmaceutical, medical device, supplies and consumables inventory as well as control over people flow (staff, patients and visitors). Not only do these solutions reduce operational costs such as energy requirements, but also reduce the need for capital expenditures on mobile assets for example, by improving utilization rates of existing equipment. Patient flow bottlenecks, when addressed, improve efficiency, allowing more patients to be ‘processed’ through the system, allowing for more revenue opportunities at lower costs.
Trends driving smart hospitals:Shift from disease treatment to health management - A major change in recent years is the shift in focus from disease treatment to health management, a term that encompasses wellness, healthy living, disease prevention, and rehabilitation. The change is being driven both by patients, who want longer, healthier lives, and by payers, which are facing budgetary pressures (and, in some cases, financial losses). The shift to health management is occurring in many countries around the world. For instance, the Singapore government has established an organization called the Health Promotion Board that encourages residents to adopt healthy living habits through the dissemination of evidence-based information and disease prevention programs at homes, workplaces, and schools. All residents in Singapore are urged to pay attention to their diet, exercise regularly, and undergo preventive screening, all of which helps reduce the likelihood of disease development (or progression) and need for hospital care. The Health Promotion Board also places greater focus on the nonhospital segments of the overall patient care pathway—and gives residents a tangible push to stay out of, and get out of, hospitals.
Quest for clinical outcomes and quality - Shocking as it may sound, diagnostic and treatment errors are common in healthcare. Research in the United States, for instance, has shown that five per cent of outpatient diagnoses are incorrect, diagnostic errors contribute to about ten per cent of patient deaths,3 and approximately 20 per cent of orthopaedic surgeons will conduct a wrong-site surgery at some point in their career.4 News reports in developing countries suggest that the misdiagnosis rates there could be even higher. The World Health Organization estimates that even in developed countries, seven out of every 100 hospitalized patients develop a healthcare-related infection each year.5 In the United States alone, more than US $210 billion is wasted annually on “unnecessary services.”6 These statistics make it clear that the concept of hospitals as the major site of care delivery needs a fundamental transformation to improve the quality of care. AI, robotics, and other new technologies can improve treatment precision and dramatically decrease the probability of error.
“Retailization” of health services - The old model of hospitals as stand-alone facilities that provide all services to all people is disappearing rapidly. Increasingly, hospitals are becoming just one component of larger, interdependent ecosystems that include multiple other facilities (e.g., primary care providers, clinics, pharmacies, rehabilitation centres). Already, many types of care are being shifted out of hospitals (Exhibit 1). In the United States, for instance, some leading retail companies offer patients a number of routine tests and treatments through clinics located within retail stores. In China, medical resources have traditionally been concentrated in tertiary hospitals, but the government is now shifting the focus toward primary care through a massive effort to build a family physician network and community clinics. New technologies are a key component of the move toward outpatient care since they make it possible to establish strong integration among the various entities, which improves the quality of care.
출처: Healthcare