By Doug King, Contributing Writer

The healthcare industry has long been on the forefront of implementing emerging technologies. As artificial intelligence (AI) turbocharges the evolution of technology, healthcare facilities managers must find ways to ensure that facilities being planned, designed and built can easily adapt to new technology in the future.

Integrating intelligent building principles into healthcare facilities will contribute to streamlining operations, making up for staffing shortages and creating better environments for patients and staff. Touted as the biggest technological breakthrough since the invention of electricity, AI technology might seem like magic. But like the magic in “The Wizard of Oz,” behind its otherworldly magistery lies a mortal world of hard work and mechanics.

Creating a truly smart hospital requires real people to collaborate with the architects, construction project teams and medical professionals from the beginning to integrate systems, collect useful data and drive innovative and enhanced services. After all, a hospital cannot be smart unless it is actively bettering the lives of the people inside it.

What is a smart hospital?

There is no textbook definition of a smart hospital, as we are still very much in the early days of the concept. But I was recently featured on a panel discussion about the emergence of intelligent hospitals alongside the award-winning technology integrator Thru Shivakumar, founder and CEO of a company that integrates smart software for buildings across a variety of sectors, including healthcare.

During the discussion, Shivakumar said most intelligent healthcare facilities include a combination of features, which would ideally work together and communicate under one umbrella system:

• security and access controls, such as digital or authorized access systems for employees, patients, visitors and surveillance
• environmental controls to continuously monitor and control airflow, air quality, temperature and humidity
• data management or integrated IT and telecommunications systems set up to ensure the security and smart implementation of all data collected
• workflow and space management, such as smart scheduling and room utilization data collection, which can be used to analyze the way space is used and suggest improvements
• emergency and safety systems with real-time occupant tracking
• energy efficiency, such as smart lighting and energy management systems, to track and reduce energy consumption across the building
• future-ready infrastructure for seamless AI integration, technology upgrades and adaptation.

In the past, these features often were disparate, unable to communicate with one another or gather crucial data to streamline a building’s daily operations. An intelligent building is created by combining these functions and finding ways to use the data collected to make the end users’ lives easier.

For example, environmental and energy systems can collaborate to automatically manage the quality of a hospital’s indoor environment to keep patients and staff happier and healthier. HVAC systems can be paired with environmental sensors that report back to the overall system and make real-time adjustments to heat, humidity and airflow while also monitoring for particulate matter that could cause illness or allergies.

These systems also can automate the lighting and window shading in a patient’s room, raising or lowering the blinds based on time of day and weather conditions to maximize natural light and maintain the room’s temperature without using unnecessary energy on manual heating or cooling.

The ROI on intelligence

It is important to recognize that advances in intelligent building capabilities are marching forward significantly in the commercial building market. The push toward enhancements in building system performance has offered the earliest return on investment (ROI) and is often seen as the low-hanging fruit of smart building implementation.

Healthcare offers an opportunity to engage and create intelligent building solutions encompassing other focus areas, including: financial and records management; clinical support services, such as logistics automation; staff efficiency; augmentation; and outpatient and inpatient experience.

While smart building technology can be a hefty financial lift for healthcare companies, the ROI on these systems is only growing. Deploying intelligent healthcare technology can mean cost and energy savings, improved operational efficiency, reduced overhead, better equipment performance, happier staff and most importantly, better patient outcomes.

In the past, it took hospital operators 10-12 years to break even from smart building investments, but the costs of these technologies are coming down at a rapid rate. Today, it takes an average of six-seven years for this technology to pay for itself in significant operational savings, with some facilities even seeing break-even points of three-four years, as the upfront investment is no longer as large as it had been.

I recently worked as a project manager at the Peter Gilgan Mississauga Hospital in Ontario, a 2.8-million-square-feet, 950-bed hospital designed by Stantec. The facility was set up from the initial functional programming stages to be as intelligent as possible, which is intended to shorten the break-even point for the facility. On another recent project, the 469-bed, 1.2-million-square-foot Niagara Health System, the efficiencies installed throughout the construction process resulted in a six-year break-even point and operational savings of $21.7 million over a 30-year planning period.

Setting up these systems now will be especially important in 20-30 years, as current macro-economic factors such as negative birth rate trends are likely to result in more staffing shortages across all fields.

For example, when automated systems can leverage predictive analytics in a clinical setting, track medication use and stock and predict when a facility is likely to run out and order more before that happens, human medical professionals can spend less time doing tedious stock-outs and more time on what really matters: patient care. This is but one of hundreds of potentially AI-informed activities that will enhance medical care.

Building for intelligence and innovation 

While adopting smart building technologies is a crucial step for future-focused healthcare facilities, this process is not without its challenges. One issue standing in the way of smooth, smart technology deployment in healthcare is timing. Often, the integration of these technologies happens during construction, but that is far too late to streamline the process.

Instead, it is crucial to begin thinking about integration during the early design phases, preferably at the functional programming stage. It might sound rudimentary, but an initial step is to compile a list of different systems in the building or campus and create a vision for the way they ideally will communicate with each other to improve healthcare delivery. This vision then can drive efforts on a system-by-system basis to achieve the envisioned performance goal.

In tandem with early visioning of integration, technology experts can educate building owners and managers on the benefits and ROI of adopting smart building technology, and they can involve the medical professionals who will use the space from the beginning as they can provide insight into their workflow and suggest integrations that can make their lives easier.

Another way to streamline future integration is to ensure the built environment is adaptable. Employing modular building techniques to create expandable and adaptable communications and information technology infrastructure can make hospitals more flexible to the integration of new technology and accommodate a variety of different kinds of medical uses.

From the vantage point of multiple decades in healthcare industry involvement, we can learn from a past parallel technological advancement that transformed the way building systems are deemed acceptable. The emergence and eventual acceptance of building commissioning — having a set process to ensure buildings perform as intended once operational — was a wild concept when it was introduced. 

But over the last generation, it has matured to incorporate structured processes and employ commonly held best practices, and it is now a widely accepted criterion for success. The achievement of intelligent buildings will follow this path. Right now, we are in early adoption, but intelligent facility strategies will become commonly employed for built environment enhancement.

As technology continues to advance, healthcare facilities have an opportunity to evolve and integrate smart technologies that can streamline operations, automate processes, save money, improve efficiency and boost patient experience without sacrificing human touch. This approach embraces and manifests the mantra of “high tech/high touch,” which was envisioned a generation ago in the book “Megatrends.” Integrating forward-thinking, AI-informed processes into healthcare buildings helps ensure the longevity of those spaces and paves the way for more innovative, sustainable healthcare facilities.

Doug King is vice president emeritus healthcare at Project Management Advisors.