5 Healthcare Priorities That Will Shape Future of Canadian Hospitals

The quintuple aim of healthcare addresses the evolving priorities of the healthcare delivery system in Canada. It serves as a framework for healthcare providers to drive digital transformation and understand how they can ensure maximum impact across the value chain.

From patient outcomes to healthcare equity, it covers five core elements described below.

1. Improve the patient experience: Ensure that healthcare services are patient-centred, timely, effective and safe while offering positive patient experiences
2. Improve population health: Address the health outcomes of a specific population or community by implementing preventative measures, health promotion and addressing social determinants of health.
3. Reduce costs: Work towards reducing healthcare costs for both individuals and the system as a whole, through initiatives like value-based care, preventive care and decreasing inefficiencies in the system.
4. Improve provider experience: Support healthcare providers by helping them reduce burnout, increase job satisfaction and get access to resources for professional growth and development.
5. Address healthcare disparities and equity: Healthcare equity aims to ensure that all individuals have fair and equal access to healthcare services and resources, regardless of their socio-economic status, race, gender or other factors.

A smart hospital features a blend of digital technologies such as IoT sensors, smart devices and AI-powered automation. They can help unite modern technology with healthcare delivery to improve experiences for all stakeholders, which is why they are referred to as a vehicle of transformation.

On the surface, a smart hospital may look like just another hospital but under the hood, there’s a connected digital infrastructure of smart beds, patient monitors, cloud servers, etc.

A smart hospital can implement these technologies in a number of ways. For example, the patient rooms can have advanced sensors and monitoring devices that provide real-time data on patient vitals, allowing for timely interventions and personalized treatment plans.

Similarly, artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms can help analyze massive amounts of data to predict and prevent medical emergencies before they occur.

The key aspects of a smart hospital include:

• Interconnected infrastructure: A network of integrated devices, systems and technologies that facilitate seamless data exchange, enhancing coordination and patient care.
• Unified communications: A centralized platform for real-time collaboration among healthcare teams, streamlining communication and facilitating decision-making.
• Predictive analytics: AI-driven analysis of healthcare data to foresee patient needs and enhance clinical outcomes through proactive care.
• Automation: The use of robotic systems and software to streamline administrative and medical processes, reducing human error and boosting efficiency.
• Virtual health delivery: Remote healthcare services using telemedicine technologies, providing accessible care without the need for in-person visits.

The benefits of smart hospitals extend beyond patient care. They serve as a medium for enhancing the entire healthcare value chain, one patient at a time. Here's how a smart hospital achieves the five core healthcare priorities.

1. Patient experience

Smart hospitals utilize advanced technologies to enhance the overall patient experience. This includes features such as personalized care plans, remote monitoring, telehealth services and electronic health records (EHR) that ensure seamless communication and collaboration among healthcare providers.

The patient experience includes digital interfaces such as electronic point of sale (PoS), web reports, automated check-in, etc., that require a smart hospital to adopt digital devices. Our partners at Lenovo have innovative healthcare solutions for meeting staff’s administrative needs, in-room patient experience and mobile health visits.

Their portfolio features a wide range of hospital-ready technology such as:

• Lenovo Think desktops, laptops, workstations and monitors
• Lenovo tablets
• Self-service kiosks
• Digital signage and wayfinding
• VDI, edge computing and cloud systems

Hospitals can elevate their digital quotient by enabling medical staff with handheld devices such as Lenovo Think laptops and tablets for easy access to key information. These devices are compatible for in-room experience as well as for telehealth services.

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 laptop offers useful features for remote health visits. It comes with extensive 4G/LTE and Wi-Fi connectivity for rural areas, rapid charge support for longer visits and fingerprint authentication for data security. Medical professionals can easily collect, transmit and analyze patient data on the go.

In the hospital, self-service kiosks and digital signage can reduce the dependency on paper for registration and patient tracking.

Lenovo virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and cloud infrastructure solutions simplify the adoption of EHR and virtual applications for patient data monitoring. Lenovo’s built-in security ensures each hospital-bound device complies with regulations and keeps patient data safe.

2. Population health

Smart hospitals leverage data analytics and artificial intelligence to analyze vast amounts of health data, identify trends and predict potential health issues in the population. This proactive approach helps in preventive care management, targeted interventions and improving overall population health outcomes.

All the digital data that a hospital generates such as electronic medical records, patient vitals, etc., is often expansive and needs to be stored securely for monitoring.

Our partners at Dell offer the PowerStore data storage solution that is modern, scalable and built for AI-driven innovation.

Dell PowerStore features all-NVMe storage, which is high-speed and compatible for large data storage requirements. It also comes with the ability to deduplicate and compress the electronic data to store more data with less space and costs.

Dell provides additional platform benefits such as cybersecurity and automated management to take the burden off hospital IT teams. Whether a hospital uses on-premises hardware, cloud or edge systems, Dell PowerStore easily connects with their current infrastructure.

3. Provider experience

Smart hospitals aim to reduce provider burnout and enhance job satisfaction by implementing technologies that streamline workflows, automate repetitive tasks and provide real-time access to relevant patient data. This allows healthcare providers to focus more on patient care and less on administrative burdens.

Our healthcare technology partners at LG offer smart monitors built for digital-savvy hospital environments that are secure and adaptable. The LG all-in-one Celeron N5105 acts an access point for doctors, nurses and clinicians to view all sorts of medical information such as EHR, X-ray outputs or patient charts.

Key features of Celeron J4105 include:

• RFID login:  Hospital staff can use their RFID card with the monitor to log on to their virtual desktop and access key patient information with a secure authentication system
• Onboard chipset: Comes with an onboard processor, 4 GB RAM and 16 GB of memory to run software applications conveniently
• Extensible displays: Connects with additional monitors to extend displays onto multiple screens at once

4. Healthcare costs

Implementing smart technologies such as IoT devices, automation and predictive analytics can help in streamlining hospital operations, optimizing resource allocation, reducing errors and improving efficiency. This leads to cost savings for the healthcare facility and patients alike.

Our vendor of record status with public sector procurement entities makes it easy to procure healthcare technology from us. We’re currently registered with:

• Kinetic GPO
• OECM
• HealthPRO
• HMMS

Group procurement organizations (GPOs) and other procurement collaboratives help healthcare organizations save money, improve efficiency and access expert procurement services by leveraging collective purchasing power.

5. Healthcare disparities and equity

By integrating smart technologies like machine learning algorithms, clinical decision support systems and remote monitoring devices, smart hospitals can assist healthcare providers in making more informed decisions, diagnosing diseases earlier and delivering personalized, equitable and evidence-based care that ultimately leads to better clinical outcomes for patients regardless of their socio-economic status.

CDW is committed to advancing Canada’s healthcare system. We actively work with hospitals, health centres and healthcare providers to not just meet their IT needs but transform their patient experiences.

We actively assist public sector health organisations to measure their requirements, source cost-effective equipment and build hospital-wide IT infrastructure. Our customers trust us for varied healthcare IT needs across their value chain.

• Modernization: Introduce modern IT to your hospital to meet your telemedicine, in-patient services or digital infrastructure goals
• Smart healthcare: Configure state-of-the-art applications for clinical mobility, remote patient monitoring and IoT with a wide partner network
• Data security: Defend your premises from cyberattacks and data breach attempts with robust data protection solutions
• Patient security: Establish patient security systems for better care, improved authentication and fewer security incidents

Our deep partnership with the leading technology providers in Canada, combined with our in-house industry experts, can help providers embark on their smart hospital journey. We offer value across device procurement, servicing and IT configuration, getting you ready for the future of healthcare.