Digitalization to Benefit the Healthcare Business Model
As the population grows, the demand for healthcare services is rapidly increasing. By 2030, the world will be home to more than 8.5 billion people, so pressures on the healthcare system will only increase. Also, the pace of population aging continues to increase, thus requiring more care for a larger number of people. All countries face major challenges to ensure that their health systems are ready to manage this demographic shift.
Digitalized hospitals are already showing they have the largest potential for “rapid positive impact” on pressurized healthcare infrastructures and operations. These smart hospitals maximize productivity and provide better patient satisfaction and flexibility, thanks to the digital transformation of the healthcare industry.
What is a Smart Hospital?
A smart hospital is a concept contributing to enhancing personnel productivity, facilitating hospital operations, improving the process quality, and ensuring patient safety by integrating multiple technologies. These new advances include medical devices, smart information systems, facility control and automated systems, location-based services, sensors and digital communication tools into health processes. This is a system where smart machines and AI make a difference. Where software and machines act on the large amount of data insights provided via automation systems intertwining around it.
A smart hospital incorporates advanced technologies like the use of robotics in a variety of roles across the hospital, assisting surgeons performing complex procedures, moving medications throughout the facility, conveying surgical and floor carts throughout the hospital, or transporting /lifting patients. Artificial Intelligence assists researchers as well as physicians facilitating emergency reactions and long-term strategic decisions. Deep neural networks help diagnose a range of diseases using historical patient health data analysis, with a diagnostic accuracy comparable to that of human physicians.
Advantages for staff and patients
In a smart hospital:
- Digitalization process optimizes workflows within the hospital
- Smart technology helps ensure the right teams are activated quickly and operating theaters are ready when needed
- Resource data is used to efficiently manage hospital resources
- Smart solutions improve time and space management
- Facility staff can focus on patients and not problems, enabling a better patient experience
Changes are good
According to McKinsey & Company, the business case for smart hospitals is already very strong. Experience suggests that in most OECD countries, implementing digital technologies in healthcare delivery can help to realize cost savings of more than 10% of overall annual national healthcare expenditures. (McKinsey & Company, 2019)
For smart hospitals to work, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. It takes a complex integration of myriad technologies to “speak” to one another. Smart hospitals do not attempt to deliver all services under one roof, but essential services are critical. One of the requirements to support the increased demand for surgical procedures is to automate, as much as possible, the CSSD. Digital solutions are an integral part of this.
Smart, Digitalized CSSD
Your machines are talking. Are you listening?
Imagine a CSSD as smart as your facility and staff. A fully digitalized CSSD where processes can be monitored from an app, where equipment data is captured and transformed into information that can help you better run your department, whether problems with your machines, or predicting potential failure modes… Sounds like a sci-fi movie in a distant future? No, this is reality.
As Engineers of Confidence, we build solutions based on your facility needs, saving you time and money. Sterile processing departments can and should be instrumental in driving the kind of efficiency gains offered by digitalization.
At Belimed we focus on the patient, their safety, and the information needed to ensure that the products used in their surgery were properly reprocessed and sterilized when they arrive to the Operating Room. We designed our new digital solution, SmartHub, to monitor the processes required for people and machines to deliver the highest possible quality and ensure the highest levels of efficiency in the CSSD.
Belimed supports your project from planning to implementation. Our goal is to provide the solutions that will deliver the most successful product. Our common goal is to use these intelligent solutions to create added value for our field support team, users of our products, and more importantly, your patients.
We believe that a smart hospital needs a smart CSSD. Both the OR and CSSD benefit from:
- Modern digital work processes
- Savings on monetary basis
- Improved departmental efficiency
- Well informed CSSD staff and service support technicians
- Quicker error resolutions
- A safer work environment
Digitalization within the CSSD has a big part to play in this.
SmartHub Orbit – The gateway to an optimized Smart CSSD
Did you know that Belimed washer-disinfectors and sterilizers produce up to two million data points per cycle? This includes parameters such as program steps, chemical dosing quantities, temperature, water volumes, processing times, number of cycles, and water conductivity. That is a lot of data! And guess what, you can have access to that data from anywhere, at any time and from any device (notebook, mobile, iPad). This data provides actionable insights that can be used to revolutionize the workflow of your department. We call it SmartHub Orbit.
A Look into the Future
What’s the next step, you might wonder? We are not fortune tellers, but a glimpse into advanced technology and changes already underway, all point to smarter hospitals, smarter systems, and smarter devices. A smarter CSSD is one of the first logical steps towards a smart future.
We envision an integrated system within a CSSD that will inform a customer/user about future machine performance. A smart system that works flawlessly to inform you well in advance when a repair would be needed. A solution that will enable you to manage operations with more precision than ever before.
Wouldn’t you be happy to work in a highly predictable environment which would consequently reduce costs, improve efficiency, and ensure the best possible patient outcomes? This kind of future is already knocking on the door.
Start Your Journey Towards a Smart CSSD
To learn more about digitalization or to set up a demo of our SmartHub software solution, contact Regional Sales at email@example.com or call 1.800.451.4118. You can also inquire through our Contact Us form on our website.