LAS VEGAS - At  the HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition, Doug Mirsky, vice president of the Digital Medicine Society (DiMe) moderated a panel on "Building the Future: The Path to Smart Hospitals" at the Smart Health Transformation Forum here March 3 that discussed the journey of building a smart hospital. 

The path to building the smart hospital of the future includes virtual technologies, patient input and control, and AI-powered initiatives, the panelists said, and smart hospitals are about addressing two opportunities or challenges.

"One is around the patient experience," Mirsky said. "This is how we keep the patient informed and an active participant in their care and create an experience for the clinician so we can remove the barriers from administrative and logistical standpoint and give them the tools and aid so they can really operate at the top of their license."

Debra Beauregard, director of medical intelligence and innovation at CHOC Children's Hospital/Rady Children's Health, said her facility has implemented virtual nursing, a medication floor command center that optimizes bed capacity via a 24/7 team in a powered center.

Additionally, the facility has added an immersive MRI experience, a mobile app and virtual reality lighting themes with entertainment augmented reality modules and customer models designed to promote healing, education and decrease anxiety.

"We are patient- and family-centric. Our MRI experience includes both a mobile app for patients before they arrive and virtual reality; there is lighting themes and entertainment," said Beauregard. 

CHOC Children's Hospital/Rady Children's Health has also introduced a readmission model, predictive model for discharge planning, a sepsis model and early detection in the emergency department.

It is rolling out a lot of AI that it can create itself and with partners.

"We are working very diligently on what we call our CHOC-GPT. Our first rollout is testing now and is a nursing assistant," Beauregard said.

"Our philosophy of creating a hospital of the future is not overdesigning for current tech but really creating that platform for future technologies," she said.

Penn Medicine, which built a new hospital in 2021, focuses on patient- and family-centered care as all of the rooms were designed with input from patients, said the health system's Anna Schoenbaum, vice president of applications and digital health.

"The rooms are conducive to a sense of openness, freedom, comfort and caring," Schoenbaum said. "The aim is to put patients in control."

The hospital also has installed smart TVs that act as patient experience boards that give patients information on what is going to happen to them each day and also integrate with EHRs.

The smart TVs also allow patients to engage in virtual visits with their families. 

The rooms also connect to virtual ICUs, med-surg flex rooms and with the emergency department.

A patient's ability to control the environment is also part of the Memorial Hermann Health System approach to creating a smart hospital environment.

"From the patient perspective, we want to make it personalized and private. How do we give a little element of control, to control things within their space? The education we provide them, the lights and temperature to create a better experience for them," said Eric Smith, chief digital officer at Memorial Hermann Health System.

For clinicians, Smith said, "How can we give them the most information possible and really streamline the experience on the clinician side and help them focus on where that care delivery is today?" 

The basic smart room can be device-based that gives patients the ability to see information about their care and about the care team and engage in video chats with a virtual nurse, he said. 

Additionally, Smith said the hospital has a lot of active pilots underway where they are exploring different technologies, including telemetry monitoring, AI monitoring and virtual nursing capabilities.