Houston Methodist Cypress Hospital opened earlier this year as a “smart hospital” designed with the most advanced digital technologies and capabilities revolutionizing patient care.
The hospital was built to optimize AI and human workforces with the goal of more efficient care and better outcomes. But Houston Methodist isn’t stopping there. It’s not possible to re-build existing hospitals at every location, but there are ways to modernize.
“We believe that the future is cameras in every room, whether that’s your operating rooms, in your acute care rooms or your ICU rooms. Those cameras and the ability to process both artificial intelligence information and virtual information is going to be the key and crux for the future,” said Roberta Schwartz, PhD, executive vice president and chief innovation officer at Houston Methodist. View the full interview here. “You don’t need a new facility to do that. I’m watching lots of different people do it with a number of different vendors to really see the technology come forward. Gathering that artificial intelligence information has been really critical.”
The digitally driven “smart” rooms in hospitals can create multiple efficiencies; one of the most successful examples at Houston Methodist occurred in the operating rooms. Ambient cameras in the ORs led to an additional 1,510 cases, or 15% more business.
“It’s fascinating because what you recognize is with incremental information, but real information, you can start moving things along much quicker,” said Dr. Schwartz.
The ambient cameras capture information about how cases progress and can notify the individuals involved in post-op of the progress. Dr. Schwartz likened the efficiencies to the airline industry.
“Airlines did this a while ago. There’s no Wizard of Oz behind the scenes saying ‘Your airplane is now ready.’ They’re not texting me individually. Housekeeping leaves the plane and then they say we’re ready for boarding. That all happens seamlessly and automatically in the same way when we put the last stitch in, the ambient cameras look at that, understand the last stitch has gone out, alert our PACU that the patient is 10 minutes away because they know the average for this doctor from the time they walk out to the time they get to the PACU,” said Dr. Schwartz.
With the automatic alerts, the PACU doesn’t have to call in to find out whether the patient is on their way. The system also triggers updates for patients’ families about where they are in the process.
“When we did this with our humans, we found that 60% of the time we were more than 10 minutes inaccurate. Now with the machines, it’s dead-on accurate,” said Dr. Schwartz. “The video is pulling that data and we’re trying to do the same thing in patient rooms with the vital sign buttons that patients have so we don’t have to go into the room between 11 pm and 5 am. We are trying to get back to what we all know is needed: restfulness for our patients.”
The bio buttons in the room, along with virtual nursing capabilities, gives patients the ability to connect with nurses when they want to without disturbing their rest. The tandem of nurses and technology has actually improved care. Over the next year or two, Houston Methodist will continue modernizing their facilities with the MyChart bedside experience and TVs across all campuses by the end of the year. They’re also advancing communication by connecting all devices.
“I read a report of all these amazing catches that we’ve made between our virtual nurses and our ICU and our bio button that never would have happened before, because we have a second set of eyes on these patients,” said Dr. Schwartz. “There are lots of things you can do, even with an older facility.”
Dr. Schwartz will be among 540+ health IT and financial leader speakers at the Becker’s Health IT + Digital Health + Revenue Cycle Conference in Chicago, Sept. 30-Oct. 3. Learn more and register for the event here!
