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‘Smart hospital rooms’: Don’t hold your breath

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HealthcareDIVE takes a skeptical look at so-called “smart hospital rooms”.

“Imagine a hospital room that can track patient movements, alert nurses that a patient identified as a fall risk has left the bed, and provide clinicians with relevant, real-time patient information such as vital signs, test results and medications that are due.”

IBM and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center pioneered the idea of “smart” patient rooms back in 2005 with the idea that such integrated technology would improve workflow efficiencies, quality of care and patient satisfaction. Since then, Cerner has entered the field, offering a smart room that includes medical device interoperability, room controls and instant access to EHRs., with the idea that such integrated technology would improve workflow efficiencies, quality of care and patient satisfaction.

But today few hospitals have smart rooms, in large part due to a lack of capital or the infrastructure to support this visionary technology.

“’The reality is that advancements toward a patient smart room of the future have to be accomplished very economically,”’ according to an e-book published by Amplion Clinical Communications, which specializes in designing and implementing patient-care communication technology for hospitals. “’You would be hard pressed to find many hospitals throwing a million dollars a bed into smart room initiatives.”’

To read the Healthcare DIVE article, please hit this link.

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