HEALTHCARE INSIGHT: SMART HOSPITALS
As healthcare evolves, what would these new wave of ‘smart hospitals’ bring to the medical landscape?
COVID-19 catapults hospitals into adopting “smart ecosystem” technology The “new normal” will see the healthcare sector further minimising the risks associated with physical contact, often by leveraging off integrated technology systems.
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s the effects of COVID-19 unraveled around the globe, one thing became clear: most hospitals in their current state were still not prepared for pandemics, even in Singapore where healthcare is considered more advanced than in other countries in the region. While many hospitals in the city have been making progress in terms of smart infrastructure and digitalisation, their functions and services continue to be centralised, and patients still flock to single locations for their health needs. Doctors, meanwhile, still find it difficult to obtain key customer information at the right time. Smart hospitals are intended to address these problems, by leveraging big data and analytics to deliver care and consultation in-person or virtually. David 14
HEALTHCARE ASIA
Smart hospitals leverage big data and analytics to deliver care and consultation both in-person and virtually
Brown, senior analyst at GlobalData Healthcare, said that COVID-19 has revealed the importance of smart technology in hospitals and its value during a pandemic, which requires remote patient monitoring and less frequent direct physical contact. With COVID-19, there is now a renewed attention on how healthcare should be delivered in a post-pandemic world, and innovations such as telemedicine, smart triage, and independent care centers have provided those in the health sector with a fresh concept of what smart healthcare is and how it should look like. “2020 marked a year when hospitals were recognized as truly strategic infrastructure, holding Singapore’s frontline in the face of a global pandemic. The healthcare system rose to the challenge, by systematically tackling novel issues
such as contract tracing, PPE supply chains, mass testing, and frontline safety processes to name a few, and safely avoided excess strain,” Alex Boulton, management consultant at Bain & Company, said. What makes a hospital “smart”? Azadeh Laffafian, analyst at GlobalData Healthcare, said that hospitals around the world are working with the Internet of Things (IoT) to efficiently track and coordinate devices and personnel, minimising patient wait times and optimising patient treatment. “Smart hospitals allow for rapid response times during emergencies through the sophisticated coordination of elevators, staff movements, patient health records, and surgical suites to maximize emergency response effectiveness. Other smart hospital solutions
