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Tuesday, January 14, 2025

The Future Of Hospitals -




The COVID pandemic has revealed the fragility of healthcare systems and how clinics and hospitals were completely unprepared for the crisis. However, this is just part of a bigger problem. In many ways, healthcare facilities are still stuck in the 20th century and are long overdue for a top-to-bottom overhaul with digital health leading the way

Future improvements can occur with a radical rethinking of hospital designs. Patient-friendly rooms allow for mobility and some in-room physical therapy. Environmentally appealing rooms with art, sculpture, and botanical displays. Lifelike trees, plants, and flowers are easily obtainable. Think in terms of a small studio apartment.

Placing mildly or moderately ill patients in a bed is in itself disabling and leads to further deterioration, especially in the aged and chronically ill. It has been shown that even a brief hospitalization for two or three days harms the human body.

The use of artificial intelligence to monitor patients could do away with many needless alarms (heart rate, EKG, IV infusion alarms at the bedside. The constant alarm sounds disrupt sleep endlessly. It is a fact that most alarms are only heard by the patient, and ignored at the nurse's station due to burnout and fatigue.

Telehealth allows the bifurcation of patient care for the less ill using patient-centered care at home, while allowing the limited availability of hospital beds for acutely ill patients. This was proven to work well during the pandemic.

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