From TVs to home air conditioning systems, consumers clamor for “smart” technologies that integrate seamlessly with their daily lives. The ones that make life easier and better get their attention.

A similar return on investment is increasingly important for providers and patients in the healthcare industry. A significant number of hospitals have already begun the journey to becoming a smart hospital, and this number is expected to increase exponentially in the coming years. Modernizing healthcare facility infrastructure delivers numerous benefits.

Opportunities in the industry

Current industry challenges make upgrading hospital infrastructure critical to staying competitive. Hospitals and health systems need technology that encourages staff retention by allowing for greater flexibility in work schedules and streamlining, or in some cases even eliminating, the mundane tasks involved with daily hospital operations. Lightening the load by automating or virtualizing certain aspects of healthcare enables staff to focus their efforts where they are most needed and alleviate some of the pressures that lead to burnout.

Evolving care delivery models and the increasing popularity of value-based care are also challenges hospitals must address. Systems that boost efficiency and accuracy in diagnosis and treatment while presenting the lowest possible cost to the patient are in high demand. This pivot from a traditional fee-for-service model to a more value-based one is gaining traction, and healthcare facilities that aren’t agile enough to transition may get left behind. Having reliable systems that can easily shoulder massive amounts of data can support agility and flexibility.

Key technologies transforming smart hospitals

Underpinning any hospital digital modernization is connectivity. For new, interconnected systems and devices to function correctly, a hospital needs a reliable network with quick and secure access that can be trusted to stay online during critical events. Emergencies are part of normal operations for a hospital, and clinicians need to know that the new technologies won’t fail at a critical moment because the network is down. Hospitals need a dependable solution that keeps everyone and everything online, from broadband access for communication with providers and patients outside the facility to the WiFi network used to transmit data within the hospital.

This network should also be secure and built to handle large-scale interconnectivity. The quality and volume of medical data generated by advances in healthcare technology are increasing rapidly, and hospitals must be able to both protect and transmit this information. A private network solution offers increased security for patients’ protected health information, as well as the ability to create dedicated bandwidth for areas of the hospital deemed most operationally critical or emergent.

Cloud computing is an important part of this network infrastructure. By employing the sizeable storage space and accessibility of the cloud, hospitals can rely on enough room to capture all the important data they collect daily. Using a powerful, secure cloud solution also means that relevant data is available to staff, as well as accessible for use with AI and machine learning.

Finally, a robust and dependable real-time location system (RTLS) solution presents additional opportunities to improve the patient experience, monitor a hospital’s important (and expensive) resources and streamline operational workflows. RTLS offers features like wayfinding to help patients and visitors navigate the facility and integrated tags for tracking and monitoring mobile medical equipment, as well as easy-to-use systems for managing staff duress situations and hand hygiene compliance.

Choosing a ‘smart’ partner

Hospitals and health systems should look for a vendor partner that offers smart solutions to the many challenges modern hospitals face and that can also integrate seamlessly into a healthcare organization’s evolving ecosystem. The ideal vendor should be able to demonstrate harnessing the power of linking individual Internet of Things (IoT) and Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) devices to a powerful and reliable network and deliver increased asset management provided by an advanced RTLS solution. Finally, the ideal partner should help hospitals and health systems address current needs but also position them to be agile and flexible for challenges in the future.