When Los Angeles County officials built Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Hospital to replace a facility in South LA that closed in 2007, nearly half of the $158 million budget  — $70 million — was devoted to IT, according to an article on the Healthcare Dive website.

The 131-bed facility opened with new-age capabilities such as smart beds that track patients’ movements, a patient interactive system, and care phones that allow doctors and nurses to communicate and share patient information on an internal network while remaining secured from accessing data outside the hospital.

The hospital plans to soon go live on a community information exchange platform, which will enable more robust and direct data sharing. 

A goal for 2016 is completing connectivity so providers can access information immediately when patients are admitted to the hospital and when they are transitioned back to ambulatory or post-acute care.

Read the article.