Information technology and automation have as much potential to transform hospitals and healthcare delivery in the 21st century as ATMs and electronic banking did for financial services in the 20th century. A report by PricewaterhouseCoopers provides the first comprehensive look at the benefits realized by the growing wave of "digital hospitals" across the country.
Jointly produced by PricewaterhouseCoopers Health Research Institute and PricewaterhouseCoopers Technology Centre, the paper, entitled
Reactive to Adaptive: Transforming Hospitals with Digital Technology, finds that technologically advanced hospitals have greater potential to improve processes and outcome in patient care, reduce medical errors, increase productivity, and compete for market share against other hospitals.
The true digital hospital relies on technology as an integral and fundamental part of its business strategy. It comprises a completely automated set of health information management capabilities--including all administrative, financial, and clinical capabilities--that go beyond the scope of advanced clinical systems to include significant integration between information and medical technologies such as patient beds, surgical equipment, nurse call and communications systems, pagers, and medical imaging.
Digital hospitals are the first step of what is seen as an opportunity to use technological advances to create an even more extended "Digital Health Community."
