Future Bet: Smart Hospital Rooms
VISION & GOALS
The days of sterile, impersonal, uncomfortable hospital rooms are becoming a thing of the past with new technology and innovation leading us to the smart hospital room of the very near future. These rooms are human-centric and focus on care, connectivity and comfort. Patients are at the center of everything we do and smart hospital rooms are no exception.
POWER OF ONE: One Care Experience
Say goodbye to the telephone, nurse call button and TV remote, and hello to the following features:
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Centralized screen for entertainment (TV, movies, Netflix); education (disease management, timeline of expected clinical visits); and digital whiteboard (medication times, discharge info, care team profiles)
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Voice-controlled room controls (temperature, lighting, window shades, nurse call, food ordering)
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Virtual-medicine-enabled rooms, connecting clinicians with their patients — anytime, anywhere
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Intelligent settings welcome patient by name and language preference; customize food menu for dietary restrictions; adjust lighting and entertainment to minimize distractions when clinicians are present
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Ambient intelligence-equipped rooms provide unparalleled patient safety and quality metrics
OUR SOLUTION
Houston Methodist Center for Innovation is committed to working with future-thinking vendors who will partner with us to leverage and improve their existing technology to meet our overarching goal: One care experience. These efforts will help establish the foundation for the hospital of the future, serving as an extension of the patient’s home and providing a feeling of self-control, care and comfort.
CURRENT RESULTS & PARTNERSHIPS
Creating one unified care experience for the patient requires partnerships with many innovative solutions under the umbrella of a single platform to seamlessly integrate technology. For the patient, this experience will be centralized on one screen, accessible via a tablet at his or her bedside.
Houston Methodist has already begun this quest to transform our hospital rooms by providing bedside tablets and smart speakers, and launching the BYOD (bring your own device) program across the system. To date, Houston Methodist has deployed more than 2,300+ MyMethodist patient tablets and 1,300+ Amazon Alexa smart speakers. In addition, the hospital rooms will be equipped with AI cameras and smart sensors for safety monitoring and bio-buttons for remote monitoring.
SOME OF OUR PARTNERS
- Aiva
- Blockit
- ElementBlue
- Intelligent Locations
- Pieces
- AWS
- Care.ai
- Epic
- Medical Informatics
- RevSpring
- Apella
- Caresense
- Everbridge
- Microsoft
- Syllable
- Apple
- Caregility
- Icims
- Modivcare
- WELL
- Aramark
- CloudMedx
- Infor
- Noteable
- WorkFursion
NEXT STEPS
While we plan for the smart hospital room, we recognize the importance of being able to retrofit these innovative solutions into the existing hospital room – and not simply integrate them into new and future hospitals. The goal is for all Houston Methodist hospital rooms to eventually undergo "smarter" changes and unify under the POWER OF ONE vision.