Smart Hospital: digital, connected, AI-based

In the Smart Hospital, all digital applications and products operate in a connected and seamless manner: this applies to both medical devices (imaging systems, sensors and wearables, robots) and purely software-based products (AI models, electronic patient records, medical apps).

Despite all the technology, the Smart Hospital consistently puts people's needs at the center. For patients this means higher quality of treatment and stay in the hospital as well as a minimization of errors. Staff in turn benefit from relief across many tasks and efficiency gains.

Important for decision-makers in hospitals: every technology investment must therefore be linked to a clear objective and measurable impact that fits within the overall strategy.

The Smart Hospital connects numerous technologies that play different roles within the overall system. Possible technologies and their functions in the Smart Hospital include:

The Smart Hospital breaks down silos in care delivery and integrates isolated solutions into a unified system. In doing so, it charts the path that healthcare must take today to meet the challenges of the future through digitalization.

The greatest obstacle to this is the lack of genuine interoperability between systems, departments and institutions. This is partly due to technical reasons, such as the absence of (standardized) interfaces, and partly to regulatory factors, such as cybersecurity or data protection requirements, or political ones, such as the (insufficient) creation of shared data spaces for different actors in healthcare.

Approaches to enable this integration, however, already exist.

The shared EHDS data space aims to make health data secure, usable and meaningfully interconnected across the EU. It is an essential prerequisite for the Smart Hospital, as its introduction means:

An example of successful integrated care would be a smart hospital ward: it needs to connect patient monitoring, nursing documentation, medication management and room control seamlessly. In doing so, the smart ward would draw on existing technologies: sensors, wireless communication and standardized data interfaces can provide real-time information, enabling faster decisions and reducing the administrative burden on clinical staff.

The OR is the most expensive department in any hospital, which is why it must function smoothly. Workflows can be improved in several ways, including:

• connected OR systems and devices reduce setup times and eliminate media disruptions,
• robotics and navigation systems increase the precision of procedures,
• digital process control improves patient safety and enables seamless documentation.

This allows OR teams to focus more on their actual work. A connected OR is therefore not only technically highly advanced, but also a lever for better medicine, higher quality and greater economic performance for the entire hospital.

Resilience must be built into the Smart Hospital as a strategic principle from the outset, at every level. The system must be designed to detect, absorb and quickly overcome disruptions without putting care operations at risk.

Fleet management in hospitals refers to the digital management and monitoring of all medical devices – from the mobile infusion pump to large-scale equipment in radiology. Predictive maintenance goes one step further: sensor data and AI algorithms detect impending failures before they occur.

This means less unplanned downtime, lower maintenance costs and greater planning reliability for clinical operations. Particularly in high-pressure environments where device failures have a direct impact on patient care, proactive infrastructure management is not a technical detail but a matter of operational safety.

Robotics and automation relieve hospital staff of repetitive, time-intensive tasks:

• Transport robots take over the supply of wards with medications, laundry or meals,
• automated pharmacy systems minimize errors in medication dispensing,
• cleaning robots reliably raise hygiene standards in a resource-efficient manner.

Nursing staff and medical professionals thereby gain valuable time that can be channeled directly into patient care. Automation thus increases operational efficiency and strengthens job satisfaction.

AI systems today analyze medical imaging data with a speed and consistency that complements and relieves human capacity: they detect tumors earlier and, in some cases, even more precisely than humans. In addition, AI supports the evaluation of laboratory data, patient risk stratification and serves as decision support in complex cases. The result is faster diagnoses and more individualized treatment decisions, without physicians relinquishing clinical responsibility.

A key element of the Smart Hospital are smart rooms: these are patient rooms that use connected systems to monitor vital signs, manage comfort on an individual basis and keep care teams informed via real-time data transfer. IoT solutions play a key role here, connecting devices such as sensors and wearables, staff and patients into a seamless care network. Through telemedicine connectivity this form of care is digitally extended beyond the walls of the Smart Hospital into the outpatient setting.