Information technology and infrastructure are key components to helping hospitals manage the mounting pressures of reinventing delivery of care, regulatory scrutiny, competition, attracting the best staff, and improving patient outcomes and experience. It is much more cost effective to design the infrastructure around interoperability, than it is to employ interoperability to infrastructure that has already been designed.
An Integrated Healthcare Facilities Infrastructure converges core infrastructure systems to automate cumbersome processes, streamline operations and maintenance, and uses inter-related data to better operate facilities. An Integrated Healthcare Facilities Infrastructure approach focuses on four primary areas:
• Mechanical Systems
• Electrical Systems
• Information and Communications Technology Systems
• Security Systems
Within these four areas of infrastructure, there are numerous intelligent technologies, all responsible for a specific function. What is also present, but often underutilized, is the capability to harness the efficiencies of interoperability. The goal, therefore, of this design approach is to better understand and utilize the intelligence inherent to facility infrastructure technologies, and implement them in a manner to make it simple for operators to realize optimal efficiencies now…and in the future.