Building intelligent hospitals

As health systems rebuild from the effects of COVID-19, digital technology can help hospitals manage patient care more efficiently inside and outside their walls. Abhi Shekar, digital healthcare lead at Mott MacDonald, explains the steps needed to build intelligent hospitals that can ease pressure in overstretched healthcare systems.

Healthcare systems are often asked to do the impossible - to manage care for huge populations of patients without adequate physiclal, digital or human resources to meet their diverse needs effectively.

Global health policy makers and clinicians know this is unsustainable with rising patient demand and workforce shortages, particularly exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. A more streamlined, digitally enabled model of healthcare is needed.

There is a growing consensus that the role of the hospital needs to change. Hospitals of the future should focus on delivering specialist care for patients with the most complex needs, while more standardised health services should be delivered more effectively in the community or in patients’ homes.

For this model to work, the entire healthcare system – operating inside and outside of the hospital walls – must be seamlessly, digitally connected.

The UK government is embarking on a once in-a-generation programme to build 48 new hospitals by 2030 – similar programmes are underway in the Middle East and India. Drawing on our digital expertise and experience developing major new hospitals, we have developed a vision for intelligent hospitals of the future with digital at the core. In the UK and the Middle East, we are helping our clients get the human, physical and digital elements working together.

Human-centred healthcare

When hospitals are designed with the needs of staff, patients and carers in mind, they have a huge potential to enhance their experiences, both within and outside the walls of the building, and improve health outcomes in society.

Digital technologies, when deployed with the end user in mind, play a critical role in this. Clinical information systems sit at the core of staff and patient journeys. Beyond this, digital technologies support how staff use clinical data, record how patients engage with health services inside and outside the walls of the hospital, and guide staff and visitor interactions with the physical building.

Technology can improve connectivity within hospitals as well as extending links into the community. This encourages greater collaboration between clinicians and empowers staff to become more productive, enabling them to focus on delivering high quality care. It can also improve communication with patients, which is essential if more health services are to be delivered in the community.

User-friendly digital tools can be valuable in helping people monitor their health at home and treat, prevent or manage disease. For example, virtual wards are being deployed in the UK to manage patients within their communities and feed information back to doctors in hospitals. While these tools are easy to deploy – the tricky part is to ensure that they connect seamlessly with clinical systems back in the hospitals and across the health system.

Smart buildings

Smart buildings are key to meeting the needs of staff and visitors, and providing a positive experience. To create smart buildings you have to start by making sure digital is a core part of the concept, design and construction process using building information modelling (BIM). This brings together data on risks, costs, environmental and social factors that are needed to optimise the design and operations across the full life of the building.

A new generation of hospitals are being constructed in the UK with technologies integrated into the fabric of buildings, while existing facilities are getting digital upgrades. These hospitals incorporate flexible technology architecture. This will allow for the collection of data to support and improve building management and operations.

For example, within the hospital, digital signage and wayfinding systems can help people to navigate buildings, while lighting and heating sensors can ensure the environment is comfortable. Smart tags embedded in equipment make it easier to identify and locate resources because they can talk to building systems. This increases efficiency, saves costs and improves safety. Smart beds can receive and transmit digital patient information, such as vital signs and medication, helping staff to evaluate patients more quickly and cutting down on administration at the bedside.

The incorporation of smart technologies into physical assets gives doctors and nurses the ability to respond more quickly to their patients, add more value through their actions and be rewarded for doing so.

Digital integration

One must-have for any modern hospital will be a sophisticated data platform which can act like a digital twin tracking everything that goes on inside the hospital as well as connecting with the services being delivered in the community.

UK hospitals are already creating intelligent clinical platforms that bring together all patient information, whether it is generated in hospitals or outside by patients, GPs or social care professionals. This can be combined with operational data to create a clinical digital twin.

Within a hospital setting, clinical and physical digital twins need to be integrated to harness data generated within different systems – whether they are clinical, operational, administrative or facilities management systems. This will enable the creation of a true digital twin of the hospital, which can increase efficiency and productivity.

When a patient is ready to be discharged, for example, it should be possible to press a button and kick start a series of intelligent processes, such as scheduling and notification of patient transfer, the dispensing of prescribed medicine at bedside, parking payment charged to patient account, initiation of robots to dispose of used linen, clean the room and delivery of clean linen for the next patient.

The case for intelligent hospitals

An intelligent hospital is one in which the human, physical and digital all work together to deliver better care, more efficiently and cost effectively – providing patients, carers and staff with a frictionless experience, and ultimately contribute to better health outcomes within and beyond the walls of the hospital.

Patients become more engaged and informed – they are active partners in monitoring their health and wellbeing. Staff become more productive — equipped with the right tools and skills to focus on care delivery. Finally, infrastructure, assets and processes enhanced with digital technology are sustainable and become more efficient — enabling better decisions, faster and cheaper.