How Smart Hospitals Are Shaping the Future of Healthcare
“Smart hospitals” are gaining prominence in today’s healthcare landscape. A smart hospital utilizes advanced technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance healthcare delivery.
While it’s true that hospitals have long incorporated technology in their operations, the difference with a smart hospital lies in its widespread integration of these technologies. Smart hospitals optimize these tools to create a fully interconnected environment, improving efficiency, patient care, and decision-making processes across the entire institution.
Smart hospital technologies are not entirely ground-breaking; many are already fixtures in our day-to-day lives. For example, IoT, the network of interconnected devices that communicate and exchange data, has long been part of our daily lives at home and work. Examples include smart thermostats that automatically adjust room temperatures or devices like heart rate monitors that communicate patient data to healthcare providers.
While much of the conversation around smart hospitals focuses on their potential to reduce costs and simplify patient access to care, an equally important yet less highlighted benefit is the positive impact they can have on nursing staff.
Empowering Nursing Staff Through Technology
By automating routine tasks, providing real-time patient data, and improving communication flows, smart hospitals can alleviate some of the pressures nurses face, enabling them to concentrate more on patient care and less on administrative tasks.
This evolution represents a pivotal shift towards a more sustainable and fulfilling working environment for nurses, heralding a future where technology is a partner, not a burden, in delivering healthcare. Here are three ways smart hospitals can help nurses:
1. Smart Hospitals Improve the Safety of Patients & Nurses
Healthcare is a high-stakes environment, and nurses often bear the responsibility for patient safety and outcomes. Fortunately, smart technology can be an ally and a second set of eyes for nurses.
Healthcare has already witnessed some of these benefits with the implementation of tech to scan medications. This has helped ensure that the right patient receives the right medication and dose at the right time, all of which has enhanced safety and reduced medication errors by up to 54%.
Moving into the future, a core component of smart hospitals will be the greater utilization of IoT technology. This encompasses a wide range of devices, including badges, sensors, and tracking systems, which work together to streamline tasks and improve safety.
Companies like SwipeSense are at the forefront of this integration, offering solutions that simplify and safeguard healthcare practices by helping to:
- Enhance Hand Hygiene: Reminding nurses about handwashing can significantly reduce the risk of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) for both patients and nurses.
- Provide Reliable Contact Tracing: SwipeSense’s contact tracing capabilities provide accurate information about potential exposures to infectious diseases. This precision helps in making informed decisions about quarantine or testing, thereby protecting both staff and patients from unnecessary risks.
- Improve Nursing Practices: The SwipeSense Nursing Insights application provides data-driven insights to facilitate key nursing activities such as bedside reporting and hourly rounding. These practices are vital for patient safety, as they help prevent adverse events like falls and pressure ulcers.
2. Smart Hospitals Save Nurses Time
Most nurses entered the profession with the desire to care for patients, not to be bogged down by administrative tasks and extensive computer charting. Smart hospitals are addressing this challenge by employing advanced IoT technologies to streamline or automate routine tasks, which allows nurses to refocus on patient-centered care.
Many smart hospitals utilize remote monitoring technology that enables nurses to track patients’ vital signs, health status, and progress from a distance. This capability minimizes the need for constant physical assessments, saving valuable time that nurses would otherwise spend traveling between patient rooms, as well as allowing for more rapid responses to patient needs when they arise.
Other smart hospital solutions, such as SwipeSense’s asset tracking services, employ IoT to offer real-time location services. With systems that track the location and status of medical equipment, nurses can quickly look up where the equipment they need is located and spend less time searching for items — and more time with their patients.
These innovations are integral to creating a more efficient healthcare environment where nurses can concentrate on delivering high-quality care with the support of intelligent technology.
3. Smart Hospitals Reduce Burnout
The cycle of nursing burnout and short staffing is a persistent issue in healthcare, each element feeding into and worsening the other. Smart hospitals have the potential to break this cycle through intelligent workload management.
By ensuring that workloads are distributed fairly and safely, smart hospitals can decrease stress and prevent burnout. This includes managing patient acuity and staffing ratios effectively, ensuring nurses have adequate rest periods, and fairly distributing shifts while reducing overtime.
Training and education for nurses have been transformed by smart hospital systems, making it easier than ever to access and engage with learning resources. This not only promotes continuous personal and professional development but also helps nurses feel more competent and satisfied in their roles. Furthermore, the ability to easily gather feedback and take nurses’ opinions into account makes for a more inclusive work environment.
By automating routine and administrative tasks, smart hospitals allow nurses to focus more on aspects of care that require the human touch. This shift not only improves patient care but also brings more fulfillment and meaning to nurses’ work, directly addressing the emotional and professional factors contributing to burnout.
Shaping the Future of Healthcare: SwipeSense’s Role in Smart Hospitals
Smart hospitals are not just a vision of the future; they are rapidly becoming a reality, reshaping healthcare delivery and improving the work environment for healthcare workers and patients. Much of the smart technology we’ve grown accustom to in our homes is finding its way into healthcare facilities, where IoT is helping with everything from patient safety to efficiency and nurse burnout.
Companies like SwipeSense are at the forefront of this transformation, equipping nurses with the tools they need to excel in their roles. By focusing on essential aspects such as handwashing reminders, nursing insights, and asset tracking, SwipeSense ensures that nurses can devote their attention where it matters most: patient care.