How hospitals would transform in the future? Would Smart Hospitals get more and more important post COVID-19?
Sherman Lan in the future hospitals must be smart with facilities, especially combat against emerging viruses and diseases. There should be enough ICU beds, ventilators, emergency care units and specialist consultant doctors and health workers who are practised to treat in emergency situations, disinfection units, protective clothes and equipments, Robotic technology for diagnosing and delivering medicines and meals for patients who have serious, fatal infectious diseases.
I feel not only hospitals should be well equipped with ICU beds, ventilators and emergency care units but at the same time they be equipped with teleconferencing as in other fields the online consultancy and medical advice will take a huge transformation as witnessed in all other industries.
The hospitals should be planned in a way with reserve to meet large number of patients at the time of crisis.
The Rise of New Coronavirus Infection (COVID-19): A Recent Update
- DOI: 10.14744/ejmo.2020.22222
Hospitals around the world now face a crisis due to COVID-19, but I think this incident will further develop every hospital around the world.
Yes, Post COVID everything is gonna change on this planet that includes Health care division as well. From the past many decades, Health care has been at the speed of the tortoise in the race against many other departs in implementing IT. But there is some organization that has to spend a lot of money to make healthcare smart by preparing health care providers these days. I work for a Health care company that provides Virtual services and we provide our services throughout 29 states in the USA. With the COVID crisis, our company is busy as ants hill in providing services, But what we realized is as we need more and more trained people on the Virtual Part of providing health services, we need a telehealth education course to train the people for the future of the Virtual Health or Telehealth. This is going to be a great turn for the whole world. And we have heard ICe age. but from 2020 onwards we will talk about things like Pre COVID and Post COVID in Health care.
I agree with Muhammad, having unused ICU beds etc sitting around just waiting for the next 100 year pandemic is just too costly. Hospitals need to have effective surge plans in place on how to create those resources over night. This situation has taught us a lot but my fear is that we will not need to use this information again while we are still around and the next generations that need to deal with such a situation will have lost the knowledge we have gained. Hospitals not only need to have surge flexibility but also a way to keep the knowledge fresh. Ever time we encounter a new pathogen, we recreate the wheel - again and again. I also agree that we need to rebuild our PPE supplies. Most of us had built those up and when the ACA and changes in the way we get paid, we needed to find ways to cut cost and in any business you know that unused inventory usually an unnecessary cost.
