Keynote Speech: Healthcare Technology Roadmap
Karen Thompson
(HCA Healthcare)
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LoginAs one of the largest healthcare systems in the country, HCA Healthcare is in a unique position to leverage the latest technology to improve the standard of patient care for 30 million patients. We provide over 37,000 clinicians with access to the latest clinical technology that reduces unnecessary variation in care, while providing them with real-time insights to deliver a world class patient experience.
During my keynote talk, I will highlight how HCA Healthcare uses its scale and operational efficiency to optimize technological advances to achieve industry leading performance, maintain a safe work environment, and deliver on its mission – above all else, we are committed to the care and improvement of human life.
• National Supply Chain Network: leveraging our network of strategically located supply chain warehouses, clinical diagnostics, and tracking software we are able to monitor the effectiveness of surgical instruments to identify clinical best practices and use this insight to encourage surgeons to utilize preferred tools to deliver better patient outcomes.
• Emergency Department Patient Tracking: using RFID tracking of patients in the ED along with predictive analytics, clinicians are able to identify patients that are most likely to be admitted or need to be transferred to the intensive care unit. Once admitted, a real-time dashboard using this combination of technology and analytics provides administrators with alerts of available rooms and potential backlogs of the entire hospital at a glance. This has enabled hospitals to drastically release the wait time for patients needing to be discharged while better coordinating bed management across the various hospital departments.
• Pediatric Monitoring & Tracking Bracelets: identical bracelets are given to all new born babies and their parents at birth. Before any treatments are given, the bracelets are scanned and centrally tracked to validate identification, prevent medical errors, and reduce the threat of abductions.
• Emergency Response Efforts: a significant portion of HCA’s facilities are located in the southern part of the country, prone to a number of severe weather conditions. We mobilize a central command center in headquarters to communicate with the impacted area and coordinate relief efforts for our patients and impacted employees. Dealing with the aftermath of the recent hurricanes in Florida, our CEO was unable to get assistance from the Governor to help transport patients whose condition had worsened after the storm, to nearby safer facilities. HCA commissioned 5-7 transport helicopters to transfer all critical patients to our nearby sister facilities in safer areas in the region. We also engaged our security team to utilize RFID bracelets to limit access to our hospitals to approved staff and patient’s family. This additional security feature allowed us to protect our patients, employees and significantly reduce the risk of vandalism that occurs after this type of event with mandatory curfews.
• Hospital Room of the Future Innovation Center: a lab has been established modeling a patient room to develop and test new technology solutions to enhance the patient experience and improve clinical efficiency, especially between shifts. Partnering with vendors, the team has created a new in-room television device that is designed to replace the static whiteboards and television sets with a monitor that will serve as the central hub for all patient entertainment, clinical education, and review of patient vitals, conduct physician virtual consults, and provide post-discharge education.