FEATURE ARTICLES
HOW DIGITAL SOLUTIONS HELP HOSPITALS CREATE FLEXIBLE BUILDING SPACES By Abe Fitzsimons Health Segment Leader Pacific – Schneider Electric Australia
When it comes to a healthcare facility, there are a lot of moving pieces to manage – especially when it comes to the physical security risks. It’s a complicated task to protect the physical wellbeing of staff and patients, maintain secured wards, as well as prevent property theft or misuse. The coronavirus pandemic has globally opened the eyes of healthcare organisations to the need for greater flexibility in how their facilities are designed and configured to utilise space–not only to care for more patients during crises, but also to support changes in patient care delivery models and to adapt to emerging demographic and other trends, including a rapidly aging population. Flexible buildings that allow healthcare organisations to modify how their spaces are used as needs evolve are, in our view, a foundation of hospital resilience.
and troubleshoot building operations remotely, reducing requirements for an on-site facility management team.
Hospital Resilience Starts with its Environment
3. Enhanced cybersecurity
Luckily, with today’s increasingly smart facility management systems, achieving a high level of hospital resilience is possible. Here, as a guide in thinking about facilities in the short and long-term, we touch on the seven most important aspects of resilience in healthcare as they pertain to the built environment.
Health systems tend to focus cybersecurity efforts on patient data, financial information and medical devices, but facility management systems are vulnerable as well. A cyberattack could shut down a facility completely. Resilience requires making sure the back doors into these systems are closed.
1. More remote operations
Facility operations are a core function in ensuring the safe and reliable delivery of patient care. An electrical network or building management system failure can stop a hospital’s ability to deliver that care. Resilient organisations will
Just as hospitals are transitioning from in-person visits to telehealth to curb the spread of infectious diseases, resilient organisations will expand their capacity to manage
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2. Power reliability and availability Every health system must have resilience against grid instability. If power is lost from the grid, what redundancies does the system have in place to keep patients safe and clinical systems running without interruption? Organisations will use microgrids and other renewable technologies to ensure energy resilience on a moment’s notice in the event of a power outage.
4. Increased asset protection