The hospital of tomorrow is already here today! Advances in data connectivity, such as the availability of 5G, and mature industry standards for low-power communication technologies such as BLE and Zigbee have led to the rise of an ecosystem that enables ubiquitous human-machine connectivity and brings closer world. This democratization of data has led to an explosion of technologies such as wearables and other data-rich user devices that have become common off-the-shelf commodities. Demographic trends point to rapid population growth, longer lifespans, and heightened awareness of health needs, which continue to grow exponentially. Advances in medicine and healthcare have reached new frontiers with the advent of new therapies such as gene therapy and individualized management of disease. These rely heavily on data and analytical tools that have played an important role in such progress. This rapid industrialization of the healthcare system increasingly requires a prescription for change. Digitization and data analytics are necessary to help meet the needs of this new connected hospital.
Industrialization of Healthcare: Powerful Drivers Require Digitalization as a Solution
Smart hospitals will help:
- Streamline hospital workflows to meet current technology needs throughout the care process
- Optimize information flow and business models, allowing professionals to refocus on their core business
- Effectively use data to make connections between patients, professionals, devices and resources
- Consolidate disparate data silos and help correlate hierarchical information to provide actionable and timely recommendations when and where they are needed
- Help control costs by standardizing, optimizing and tracking nonconformities
- Leading medical advancements through data-driven research leveraging AI and ML capabilities
Using data to continuously measure hospital performance is nothing new. Solutions for the growing need to measure hospital KPIs such as patient outcomes, bed occupancy, procedural effectiveness, etc. have been available over the years. Over the past few years, information technology has largely provided the tools and solutions required for these essential services, and will continue to do so.
Today’s smart hospitals place higher demands on these existing solutions, which need to evolve and keep up with current expectations. The explosion in the variety, velocity, and volume of data, cloud-based virtualization strategies, easily scalable data storage solutions, increased connection bandwidth, and the commoditization of handheld consumers of this information have led to most of the solutions in the past few years. The scheme looks almost outdated overnight. The industrialization of healthcare places new demands on digital applications and requires leveraging technological enablers such as artificial intelligence, secure cloud and edge computing.
Clearly, the challenges posed by the industrialization of healthcare can only be addressed by rapid digitization across the continuum of care.
In the vision of such a connected smart hospital is the concept of digital twins. Update virtual representations of real hospitals with real-time data, track hospital operations with data visualizations, and provide data-driven decisions with advanced analytics. Machine learning and artificial intelligence provide input where possible to augment human capabilities using prior data. Most engineering equipment today has data collection possibilities that are well used for this kind of monitoring. Diagnostic imaging equipment such as MRI and CT scanners are fundamental to the efficient functioning of today’s hospitals. Analyzing machine performance parameters and the health of these machines is key to ensuring their uninterrupted availability. Clinical engineering and facility maintenance departments will welcome the availability of this continuous measurement. Bring visibility into operational needs such as heating, cooling, real-time location services for mobile devices, and uninterruptible power monitoring into a powerful driver to integrate data for efficient operation of smart hospitals.
Drawing on concepts from the process industry and factory floor, the virtual digital twin of the connected hospital provides transparency at every stage of the patient experience. Secure cloud technology and standards for intercommunication make integration with existing health systems possible, although not easy. Data flows along information paths and standards, wherever and whenever existing data enables interoperability between disparate systems. By following a clear blueprint with a clear vision, a digital twin of a smart hospital can be achieved using the technologies available today.
The security of medical data is paramount, and connected hospitals will pay greater attention to these expectations. The requirements are stringent, and current standards place a strong emphasis on the security of health-related data. Existing HIPAA standards and their need for administrative, physical, and technical safeguards require that most information flows be secure. The current ISO standard also specifies a set of best practices for handling health data. Having templates and standard operating procedures for implementing such systems will go a long way towards meeting the level of security required by the next generation of connected hospitals. A centralized security overview is often much better than a multitude of disconnected IT systems that provide the potential for data leakage and breach. Many large organizations have turned to secure data clouds that offer redundancy, fail-proof fallback, levels of security, geographic boundaries, fault tolerance, hardening, and other capabilities older technologies cannot. Smart hospitals will take advantage of these and, if properly designed, can set new standards in the management of health data and its security.
In conclusion, we are in an exciting time and place to witness the paradigm shift in the rise of connected hospitals. Recent megatrends, including those accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, have put enormous pressure on the healthcare industry. On the one hand, this requires rapid industrialization of the healthcare system leading to hospital consolidation, pressure on supply chain logistics, shortages of skilled labor and the need to cut costs while rapidly standardizing and optimizing the quality of care. On the second front, technological advances have made data ubiquitous and raised expectations for hospitals and clinical services. The rise of wearable technology, the maturation of IoT standards, and the availability of rapidly scalable and virtualized secure clouds will lead to the continued development of these concepts in healthcare.
