Declining birthrates and aged societies have become commonplace around the globe. With this trend comes a growing demand for long-term healthcare services as well as a shortage of medical caregivers. Over the years, “smart medical care” has gradually improved the imbalance between supply and demand in the medical environment. From merely digitalizing various medical processes and automating management to introducing AI over the past decade, the industry is moving toward reducing medical personnel costs and boosting value-added medical services.
From the users’ perspective, digital services make a big difference in client loyalty as evidenced by a survey conducted by Black Book—a US healthcare-centric market research company. According to the report, 90% of the clients surveyed lost their loyalty because healthcare providers failed to render satisfactory digital services, which proves an established trend for a strong need of medical services to go digital. With the popularity of big data analysis and IoT devices, improving the user experience and reducing hospital operating costs have become the two major goals of smart medical institutions. Their aim is to provide clients with a people-oriented experience and create an ideal medical environment that is healthy and safe.
However, since the beginning of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has raged around the world, which is testing whether the hardware and software environment supporting smart medical care can withstand such a sudden upheaval. Looking toward post-pandemic times, a healthy medical environment not only must be clean, it also should be able to adjust its environment provisioning immediately for epidemic prevention if necessary. This would include enhancing air quality and cleanliness to reduce infection risks and transforming existing hospital spaces into isolation wards. In addition to meeting the needs of users, the new post-pandemic generation of hospital infrastructure must also meet the essential requirements of a smart medical environment with “flexibility,” “smartness,” and “safety.”
For users and medical institution managers, the following smart building advantages can meet the needs of daily operations and emergency situations at the same time:
1. Intelligent control of air cleanliness and comfort:
General spaces such as halls and waiting rooms, and specific areas such as negative pressure wards and operating rooms have different requirements for temperature, humidity, and cleanliness. Whether it is for normal operation or during a special anti-epidemic period of time, maintaining desirable air quality and comfort in various regions via intelligent monitoring requires a smart building management system that features cross-system integration.
2. Automated operation that reduces labor required:
Medical institutions have limited manpower. Through real-time big data collected in medical institutions, building automation technology helps effectively offset the manpower required for hospital management and reduce human errors. The technology can be applied to personnel access management, air quality monitoring, user behavior detection, and asset tracking and management, among others. This technology effectively improves the medical system, enhances medical services, reduces patients’ waiting time, adjusts air conditioning systems promptly, and locates and tracks medical equipment so that medical caregivers can focus on providing patients with better services.
3. Improved user experience:
As users have different needs for the medical environment, the customized environment settings provided by smart building technology can effectively improve user satisfaction. For example, one can adjust the air-conditioning and lighting in the ward according to environment settings to meet one’s specific needs.
4. Contact-free health protection:
To reduce the post-pandemic risk of cross-infection attributed to contact, contactless technology applications such as biometric access control, people-counting social distancing management, and wireless lighting control, or air conditioning control can more effectively ensure the health and safety of medical caregivers and patients.
5. Personal safety protection:
The smart building management platform serves to integrate smart image analysis and security technology to provide users with a safe environment in medical institutions. For example, access control management in controlled areas, fall detection for patients, and personnel access tracking are all in place to prevent potential security threats from emerging and to provide immediate assistance to patients once an accident occurs.
Addressing the above-mentioned smart building needs of medical institutions, Delta’s Smart Building Solutions is a comprehensive strategy to pursue hospital management efficiency and user satisfaction at the same time. It will help us achieve our aspirations for a healthy, safe, and people-oriented smart hospital in post-pandemic times. To learn more about Delta’s solutions for smart medical institutions, please check out Delta’s related Building Automation Solutions.
Source : Building Automation Business Group
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