 A woman in labor requires an emergency caesarean section. Within seconds the anesthesiologist, nurses and obstetrician are notified via a wireless phone network. As they run to the operating room, doors automatically open and elevators are available.
A surgical patient receives a smart wristband equipped with an RFID chip. Prior to surgery, a nurse scans the wristband to verify his identity and other vital information and at various times throughout the procedure, all participating hospital staff members are scanned to create a real-time electronic record of events.
These aren’t just visions for the future, says Baldur Johnsen, Director of Healthcare Market Development, HP Worldwide Health and Life Sciences. Rather, they’re real examples of the gains achieved by the digital hospital—a healthcare transformation that goes beyond advanced clinical systems and leverages the convergence between information, medical, communication and building technologies through technology integration.
“A digital hospital initiative is about much more than new hardware and software,” says Johnsen. “It’s about taking a holistic approach to managing technology, and using it imaginatively to improve processes, enhance safety, improve quality of care and enable customized healthcare.”
Born out of a ground-breaking project delivered by HP, Cisco and IMATIS at St. Olavs Hospital in Trondheim, Norway—considered one of the most modern hospitals in Europe—the digital hospital is a journey that requires “leadership, innovation, courage and patience,” says Johnsen.
People, process and technology
To start, healthcare organizations must overcome management challenges created by a fractured approach to technology implementation, and lay a foundation that brings people, processes and technology together.
From there, HP and its partners have identified three phases on the path to a digital hospital including:
- Introducing a highly available network to support the core technology infrastructure and remove barriers to innovation
- Converging disparate systems onto one network through IP enablement
- Integrating disparate technologies
University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust partnered with HP to design, implement and manage its digital hospital infrastructure. According to John Aird, Director of Information Management and Technology, “As IT moves into critical areas of clinical service, users need to feel confident in the ease of use and reliability of their new IT systems, especially where substantial change management has accompanied the program. Users just want their systems to be there, fast and reliable, when and where they’re needed.”
Johnsen stresses looking at the big picture of technology infrastructure, including things like nurse call, door openers, intercom, closed circuit television, phone systems, facility control systems, blinds, lights, heating, information systems, medical devices and paper. For the kind of connectivity that has to happen within a digital hospital, everything needs to be on one Internet Protocol-based network.
HP and its technology partners bring in an integration engine to tie disparate technologies like medical devices, building control systems, clinical information systems, communication systems, elevators and door openers into one cohesive middleware layer that facilitates information sharing and workflow change. “We make it possible to present information on multiple devices, from IP phones to web portals to anything that’s out there,” Johnsen notes.
Technology-enabled processes
To help customers on their journey towards a digital hospital, HP offers a range of products and services from current state assessment, architecture design and implementation planning, to infrastructure implementation, information management and integration.
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