Modern healthcare facilities are some of the most sophisticated environments ever constructed. Smart hospitals are embracing cutting-edge technology at an unprecedented pace. These tools promise more streamlined hospital operations, energy efficiency, ensured compliance and, most importantly, better outcomes for patients. What happens when tech innovations become a burden?

Hospitals rely on building automation systems to control and monitor critical functions and maintain proper standards. These automated buildings can reduce energy consumption, improve performance, increase safety and function independently without direct oversight. All this maximizes hospital efficiency, lowering costs and benefiting the hospital at an administrative level.

Further optimization is achieved at a patient level using technological innovations. Artificial intelligence tools, electronic health records, patient monitoring systems and networks of interconnected smart medical devices are designed to save time, ease workflow and ensure seamless communication across all facets of patient care. However, in some cases, they create more complexity. 

Technology may take away from care

Smart hospitals operate dozens of separate digital platforms that were purchased independently. In a single shift, staff members may need to rapidly switch between programs that require separate logins and multiple interfaces.

Nurses and clinicians already devote significant portions of their shifts to work that takes them away from direct patient care. The technology designed to offload some of those administrative tasks and make their jobs easier can, instead, make them harder. 

Hospitals face mounting pressure to improve outcomes, manage costs, address staffing shortages and reduce burnout. When implementing new technology, decisions are often driven by hospital compliance requirements, administrator goals or tech vendors who promise all the latest bells and whistles. Yet the nurse using the platform at 3 a.m. may never have been asked whether those features are beneficial, easy to use or even necessary.

Training programs may help bedside staff learn to correctly use these tech products but also increase their mental load and take time away from patients. Additionally, caregivers are often the first ones called on to be tech support specialists for patients struggling to use or understand these smart devices. For a hospital caring for a large portion of elderly and infirm patients with low tech literacy, this can place an even bigger burden on nurses and doctors.

Give staff a voice in workflow decisions 

The most successful tech integrations occur when frontline staff participate in the process from the beginning. Bedside perspective from nurses and physicians, combined with practical knowledge from facilities teams and maintenance personnel, cannot be replicated anywhere else. 

They know which workflows and problems benefit from implementing these products versus where measurable difference would be minimal, ensuring solutions do, in fact, help deliver the best care to the building as well as the staff and patients inside it. They can also provide suggestions for incorporating the technology in a way that reduces their workflow and stress instead of adding to it.

For example, one product marketed to hospitals allows a patient to adjust certain controls in their room using a mobile app. An operations specialist might see that as a benefit, because patients can meet their own comfort needs without bothering the staff. However, if the patient doesn’t know how to use it, or if there are any problems with the app or device, they ask their nurse. 

Allowing bedside staff a voice in these decisions gives them agency and helps reduce the burdens they face. Overwork, frustration, burnout, alarm fatigue and eroding trust in technology are all significant problems that can directly impact patient outcomes. 

When thoughtfully implemented, smart hospital technologies can offer tremendous benefits. AI-driven tools can improve patient flow and reduce overcrowding, connected building systems can automate critical environmental monitoring and integrated platforms can eliminate manual jobs that waste valuable time. 

It’s not only about efficiency. Enhanced patient monitoring can extend beyond the hospital and promote early interventions. AI-powered data integration improves communication, diagnostics and decision-making across departments.

Open systems over isolated platforms

For those involved in the design and construction of smart hospitals, the best path forward is to be more intentional about how technology is selected and integrated, choosing the most beneficial products for their facility and staff. 

Open systems that communicate seamlessly with one another should be prioritized over isolated platforms requiring multiple logins, redundant training and different maintenance schedules. User feedback should be incorporated throughout each phase of the process, not only after the fact. 

The ultimate goal of any hospital is to efficiently and effectively improve, heal and save lives while supporting the hospital operations and staff making it happen. Smart hospitals that thrive in the years ahead will successfully align technology with the people who depend on it every day.

Diego Palacios is the vice president of building automation national sales at Harris Co. He has been leading high-performing teams to sales and business development success with Harris for nearly two decades. His personable, consultative approach has helped clients and team members understand how technology can address their needs. Palacios does this by reframing the way we view technology.