Smart hospitals also utilize the potential of a smart building

A hospital is primarily intended to heal a patient in the best possible way. Smart building technology, combined with so-called smart hospital technology, can play a role in this. Surgeon at Radboud university medical center and professor of surgical education Harry van Goor will participate during a special meeting of the Building Automation industry provide text and explanation about this. We spoke to him briefly.

By: Dimitri Reijerman

Van Goor has been working on making hospitals smarter for about seven years: “I have been working on projects under the name 'healing environment' for a number of years. This uses data from sensors and at the same time you use the available smart building technology. I see a smart hospital as a combination of monitoring, analyzing and acting on behavior within a building. And a smart hospital is intimately connected to what we know from construction: a smart building.”

He immediately gives a concrete example: “With ambient lighting, for example, if you use it properly, you can promote sleep in a patient. If you use very bright light after six o'clock, you will further disrupt people's day-night rhythm.”

Heal faster

The Nijmegen hospital already contains a lot of technology to assist a patient in the healing process and make the stay in the hospital as pleasant as possible, Van Goor explains: “The Radboud has a lot of smart building technology. For example, patients can automatically close the curtains from their bed or chair via a tablet. They can also change the light intensity. But what we are now moving towards with smart hospital technology, which mainly consists of sensors, is to make it work better together with smart building technology.”

The professor continues: “An example is patient safety. A patient may fall out of bed. If you notice with a sensor that a vulnerable patient is getting up in bed, in combination with that you determine that there is no one else in the room and it is at night, you can give a signal to immediately turn on the light. Or send a signal to a remote nurse. Or you can make a direct video connection with the monitors we have installed in Radboud.”

Command center

“With this technology you also develop more efficient work processes. We are now considering connecting twelve rooms with a small command center. Someone can keep an eye on these rooms there using smart hospital technology,” says Van Goor.

“Conversely, you can also use signals from a smart building for the well-being of patients. For example, measuring the CO2 level, combined with data about a patient's stress level, can give reason to increase ventilation or open a window.”

During the meeting in October, Van Goor wants to convey a clear message: “Our smart hospitals and other smart buildings generate a lot of data, but we still use it too little. If we use that data in a smart way, we can achieve the effect of a 'healing environment' much better. And we have now started as a next step to see how this technology can be used in disability care and elderly care.”