HEALTHTECH: Tell us about the planning that goes into building a smart hospital. At what point did your organization decide to make technological innovation a goal?
RESTUCCIA: I think “smart hospital” may be a misnomer; “patient-centric” or “technologically advanced” is probably more accurate. Our perspective in the early design for our newest facility was, “How can we develop and build a hospital that can leverage technology to ensure the best care is delivered in the most effective and efficient manner?” Flexibility was a big part of that; having the cabling in place, for example, so that every room is both med-surg and ICU-ready.
DALE: It started about 12 years ago, when we decided to move to an electronic health record. That system is a source of so much rich data and has become foundational for how we’ve set up technology across the enterprise. The other big thing that set us up to be a smart hospital is network connectivity. We’ve prioritized having the bandwidth and high network reliability to really use mobile applications and other technologies for clinical decision-making, communication and patient monitoring.
ROEBUCK: With us, it was also our EHR. We went live with Epic in 2012, and that’s where I’d say we started our journey. Since then, we’ve had this constant push to maximize what we do in the technology space while always keeping our focus on patient care efficiency, quality and safety. We’re not a hospital that can spend money frivolously, so we’ve tried to make good choices about where we invest in technology.