Fundamentals of the Intelligent Hospital

Over the last decade the changing healthcare environment has driven hospitals to critically evaluate and optimize their operations to enhance patient treatment and care prompting the emergence of the intelligent health system. Unlike traditional health systems, intelligent health systems are emerging as entities that leverage data, AI, the cloud and other digital tools to create strategic advantages and better outcomes. While all health systems claim to be doing this, there is a different approach used by intelligent health systems. Both models recognize the inherent power of using data and AI to improve the delivery of health services, but intelligent health systems are this this to the next level. They are using the intelligent health revolution to rethink the entire delivery model. Their focus is on leveraging AI and other technologies to efficiently provide health and medical services across all touchpoints, experiences and channels. To deal with the complexity of patient care workflows, enhance patient diagnosis, treatment, care, safety and satisfaction, home health and telemedicine the design of Intelligent Hospitals has focused on the integration of diverse technologies, to provide a seamless exchange of information. This book outlines the technologies and clinical applications which constitute the fundamentals of the Intelligent Hospital and the technologies that support patient care and health management across a spectrum of healthcare environments, the home, remote offices and treatment facilities and the hospital itself. The book introduces the changing environment of care resulting in new distributions of patients across a broad spectrum of the patient acuity and care environments, including the Intelligent Hospital; supporting treatment areas, such as the OR, Radiation Therapy, interventional radiology, patient care areas, such as the ICU, ambulatory / telemetry as well as all supporting functionality, including infection control, laboratory medicine, pathology, biomedical engineering, Informatics and Information Technology; I-Home supporting networked dynamically interact with the technologies and application in a variety of care settings. Each chapter describes the fundamentals of integrating diverse technologies and clinical systems to create a seamless environment enabling data to be share across the complete spectrum care environment, starting from the ambulance, through the emergency room, diagnostics, treatment and recovery in the hospital to the home environment. The book highlights and details specific topics, including medical devices and applications, RFID, network and wireless infrastructure; interoperability and integrations, artificial intelligence and much more with a focus on connectivity, integrations and architecture to create a seamless environment.