What are Smart Hospitals? | IoT For All Podcast E152 | Mackenzie Health's Felix Zhang
you are listening to the iot for all media network hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the iot for all podcast i'm your host ryan chicone and today's guest is felix sang the cto of mackenzie health where he is responsible for all the information technology infrastructure applications and integration work for mckenzie health they also led the design and implementation of all of the it and smart technology featured in canada's first smart hospital so we're going to talk a lot about smart hospitals today we're going to talk about rtls iot in the hospital and medical setting just in general as well as what does the future look like for iot rtls and other technologies in the healthcare space before we do that if any of you out there are looking to enter the fast growing and profitable iot market but don't know where to start check out our sponsor leverage leverages iot solutions development platform provides everything you need to create turnkey iot products that you can white label and resell under your own brand to learn more go to iot changes everything dot com that's iot changes everything dot com and without further ado please enjoy this episode of the iot for all podcast welcome felix to the iot pro podcast thanks for being here this week oh thank you yeah thank you for having me absolutely i'm very excited about this conversation i'd love it if you could start off by just giving a quick introduction to our audience talk a little bit more about your background experience you know anything you think they'd be they'd find relevant and exciting to kind of hear about yeah absolutely so my name is felix zen i'm the cto for mackenzie health mckenzie health is a two hospital health network uh just north of toronto in ontario canada and uh recently we opened a new collection hospital which is the first smart hospital in canada so my role is to to manage the i.t infrastructure applications and also system integrations for the new hospital and also for our existing facility fantastic that kind of actually answers one of my next questions which was talking about being a cto in the healthcare space um but i'd love it if you could just give a little more background on the company itself and kind of you know uh just just anything you think would be relevant for our audience to learn a little bit more about the organization yeah absolutely so mackenzie health is a regional healthcare provider for the southwest of york region which is about 30 minutes north of toronto and we have um two hospitals and recently we opened a new hospital which has about uh 350 beds and also has a capacity to expand it to 550 okay that's in the future and just recently um we um i think it was in june 2021 we opened a new uh hospital and with uh full uh integrated smart systems inside of the facility to be able to provide uh better uh services for our patients and also provide bad experiences for our clinicians and physicians that's awesome um i love it if you so i want to get into talking more about the the hospitals that you will have you all have the implementation of iot kind of why you got into that but i want to see if you could start off by just telling our audience in your own words what exactly is a smart hospital it's very good question so we look at the smart hospital is to starting with a problem statement how the technology can solve some of the operational challenges and how we can use the technology to provide better services for patients how can we use technology to make our clinician's life a little bit easier okay and so everything started with that uh problem statement and it's about the 10 years ago once we started the planning for the new hospital uh we look at it how do we how a future hospital could deliver a like a safe uh efficient and also a high quality patient care um with the use of technology and many of the new and emerging technology that has been widely used in different industries and also uh in our personal life for example we use iphones use mobile devices all the time but at the time the healthcare is a little bit behind and so we decided to enable adopt and also integrate them into a hospital setting so with overall goal to improve the experience of care and for both our patients and also for our staff so what is it about iot technologies that have really made it fit so well in a hospital setting and also what are iot technologies enabling within hospitals now and what are they kind of basically enabling them to do that they weren't able to do in the past yeah a good question so for example the iot and we can go in look into the rtos and we often refer it to a kind of indoor gps system it has all the sensors uh within the facility here to be able to provide the locating services for our for example asset management we know where the beds are and where the iv pumps are and also be able to provide locating services for our patients and of our staff and if you look into that and it can drive a lot of workflows and be able to provide a safer and more efficient environment for the patients and the clinicians and i gave you a very simple example uh we we have the the rtos system has a security solutions attached with it and at any location if the staff has an emergency they can press a button on their badge and it will send alert to nearby nurses on their handheld device so this is how it works in our facility that's fantastic so you mentioned a second ago when you all kind of ventured down this path you started with a problem statement can you kind of expand on that and talk to us a little bit more about the process you went through to build the first uh smart hospital for the country kind of you know what the problem statement was that you all were focused on and then how you went through the process of figuring out which problems needed to be solved how you're going to solve them what companies you're going to work with what technology you're going to use in as simple as terms as possible you don't need to go obviously into crazy detail but just kind of walk me through that process and what that was like for you all to get to where you kind of are now yeah absolutely so as we started the planning of the new facility we started looking into different systems and rtls was for example one of them just use that as an example right and so um we we um as in order to make uh inform the decision we uh looked into the system and we started the piloting uh of them um in our existing facility okay at a much smaller scale and we put the system in one of the our inpatient unit and we look into a different workflows and um we are able we were able to use the solution in a real patient care environment to validate uh its capability and also to get feedback from the front lines which were crucial to the success of the much skill much larger scale deployment at the new hospital so for example at the time we were able to trigger alerts from the system but we we figured out oh the alerts was popped only on the computers okay and but if the nurse is not beside the computer and we won't be able to receive those alerts so that's why we attached added a mobile notification solution onto that within our new facility to solve that problem gotcha and and when you're kind of going down this path as an organization you know the management team is deciding what you want to implement how you want to deploy it what kind of roi are you looking for in these kinds of situations because you know in a lot of other industries roi is driven around revenue you know kind of being able to justify it from a cost perspective is it the same in a hospital setting or are there other things like patient satisfaction you know the the operational improvements that you have for staffing are there other roi that you're kind of looking for when you're deciding which types of use cases in a sense or solutions to deploy within within the hospital itself yeah well healthcare is a little bit different and because the uh revenue is not the key indicator for healthcare obviously we are be mindful with all costs and be efficient and effective but for example the patient's safety and the patient's experience the outcome of the the care and also for example the length of stay and readmission rate all kinds of different indicators are more important in many times and so those are the things we were uh we're looking into to how to improve the overall experience of care it's not only driven by revenue or driven by um you know the utilizations those kind of uh dollar related data sure out of curiosity if you know as a lot of our listeners are probably more on the you know they've been a patient at a hospital they've been a visitor at a hospital probably not as many of them have worked in hospitals what kind of things would they witness um in a smart hospital that you maybe could tie this to maybe any potential use cases or applications of the technology that you deployed that directly connect to the experience of a potential patient or visitor yeah absolutely so um if you um as an outpatient for example if they walk into our facility right um the the traditional registration is done by uh by a desk like always a person registration a nurse or a clerk and within our new hospital uh we have kiosks like uh we would checking like uh in the airport so it will be down through the chaos and then it's boom it's completed self-service and if the patient is in our inpatient room we have a ipad bedside ipad which is kind of a central hub to provide the patient with experience for example they can order meals through the ipad they can watch tvs and they can uh even uh broadcast some of the uh religion services that have been happening in the hospital so in patients they can watch those in life and um they will be able to access to their medication uh if the uh education data uh based on their condition so for example the patient if the patient is going to have a procedure tomorrow and all the preparation checklists will be presented on that ipad so patient can uh do their uh self-study or to receive those information and also with some recovery instructions that would be pushed onto the ipad based on their uh condition and furthermore the patient will be able to control their room lights temperature blinds through that ipad it's kind of a single point of device which they can use to control their stay so basically a hub for everything they need to interact with while they're there exactly and how did you all gauge the success when you're doing the pilots and so outside of curiosity basically when you know you're running these on a smaller scale were you just speaking with patients when they would leave you know asking how they enjoyed these new kind of benefits and features of the hospital or how were you kind of assessing which how you know how these were being received and the success of each of these yep abs um yes so uh for example we said um i've just used the example we just mentioned about the ipad solution we put in front of the patient uh with our uh old facility we have a older generation of the similar solution but which has much less features available and we were able to put the new solution pilot with one of the unit and we we are collecting those feedbacks from the patient so we can do a comparison in between those two solutions so overwhelmingly we see a lot of good feedback from the new solution that led us to decided to deploy that with the new facility and also some of the feedbacks we we were had the opportunity to correct or enhance the solution with large-scale deployment that's fantastic and when you were building these solutions and deploying them even at the pilot stage what were the biggest challenges you all came across in you know deploying iot solutions with you know indoors in a healthcare setting that maybe you didn't expect going into it or or things kind of looking back that you realize were a bigger challenge than you originally thought yeah so a lot of challenges are about integration so we have different systems being put in place uh within that new facility even with a pilot and obviously they need to talk to each other to drive those automated workflows okay and often time um those new integrations we are kind of in at the leading edge of those integration in the solution and often time it's the first time being deployed in the real life environment so it's a completely different as you uh would test it in the lab so you will see a lot of different things that we probably would never see in the lab environment and in addition to that and in the middle of the implantation we've been throwing a curveball called covet and that was a huge challenge for us for our implantation team for vendors and i still remembered at the time and the installation crew they had to come on site at midnight to start their shift because we want to manage the capacity limit within that facility so thanks to all the uh team members and all the vendors the dedication helped us to achieve the ultimate goal so so mentioning kovit something i just thought about was you know we've heard a lot about hospitals having to put a lot of their iot initiatives on hold because of covid which makes a lot of sense but when did you all find any maybe potential new use cases or solutions that you're looking to kind of you wanted to deploy that would help a situation like a pandemic or a you know a health crisis that would cause an influx in you know patients influx and visitors uh in the future is there something that maybe came out of the pandemic that you all took from it and we're like hey we need to build a solution to help solve this that maybe we wouldn't have realized otherwise if the pandemic let's say did not happen yes so a lot of lessons learned through the pandemic in the last year and a half and one of the things we look at it was the uh virtual visit and that's that's a huge thing because we had that solution in the past um before kovit even but the utilization wasn't very high at the time and as we are able to quickly deploy the expanded solution to uh most of the physicians it provides additional uh a way for them to continue to provide services for uh our patients as example you know um at the starting of the covet the hospital is kind of in a lockdown situation and we have clinics inside of the hospital the patients cannot come in and so that's kind of uh had a huge problem at the beginning of that and as we were able to quickly deploy the virtual visit solution for our physicians and for our patients it's kind of easy is that problem so that's definitely something i i think will be a continuous need to be deployed and enhanced over time that makes a lot of sense i've seen that in you know medical offices um big and small hospitals you know physical therapy places you know just kind of get into that that virtual aspect which you know the pandemic kind of really amplified the importance and the value of that so that makes a lot of sense one question i kind of had as a follow-up to almost everything you've been mentioning throughout this conversation is from a leadership perspective within a hospital the decision makers that are you know analyzing the success of these solutions what kind of data mattered most to you all and how do you foresee this new type of data that you're able to collect from from iot benefiting the hospital kind of over time in the long run yeah currently we have a variety of real-time dashboards and reports for our frontline front-line nurses and even for managers to make operational decisions and also we produce reports for our leadership team and to make a cross-functional and strategic decisions as we are able to collect more data out of new facilities through iot we will integrate real-time data with the historical data to push them through the predictive and analytics and machine learning so we we think as we collect more data we will be able to get to a point to start alert the likelihood of event and outcomes before they occur and to further reduce risk and improve the outcome of care and how do you see you know iot technologies we talked about rtls here how do you see all that playing into the future of healthcare not just within your own hospitals but you know hospitals around the world different kinds of medical facilities how do we kind of see or i guess how do you all see iot and rtls and other technologies like that playing a role in that future development and kind of what does the future of hospitals and smart hospitals really look like in your mind yeah in our mind it's like for example we just use rtos example it's like a gps service right so you just imagine on your own cell phone you turn on your gps and then you will be able to enable a lot of uh workflows and automation and in the health healthcare facility is the same and if we are we are able to track our patients track our equipment within the facility and then we are able to layer this with other data we have so for example we can feed those data into our emr system and when for example when a nurse is prepares for iv infusion in the emr and the system can automatically pop up and inform the nurse with the nearest available iv pump so they so they can go and get it so that's just one of the examples it can automate and help the nurses to get their work done more efficiently and one of the last questions i want to ask you before we wrap up here is from your side of things or maybe just personally what are you most excited about for the future of smart hospitals the technologies that are coming out what are you hoping is you know is enabled by these technologies and just i guess generally what excites you the most about iot and the hospital setting yeah the most excited about is we we have this platform integrated uh systems and it can generate a lot of uh potentials and uh different opportunities for us it's the sky is unlimited and we are able to use for example um you know as we have the indoor rtos system we can layer up another application to guide uh the patients from a to b inside of of the facility uh which would have could be done uh through like google maps right in all those settings and a lot of this kind of possibilities still exist and we were we will continue to expand our offering to our clinicians to our patients based on this current platform and those are you know once every time we have a new problem statement comes up and saying yeah probably the technology can help to solve that problem uh so those are the most exciting moments for me fantastic and the last question i want to ask you here is um what advice do you have for companies out there medical space or or not that you know you may be able to kind of share around how you can go about selecting not just the right technology but also the right company to work with when you're starting down your iot journey because i know you all work with sendtrack and you probably went through a process to select centrak to be you know you'd be your partner for for these solutions how do you just generally would you however what general advice do you have for companies looking to go down their iot journey on how to best select not just the technology but also the company they work with yeah so um you know there's a lot of solutions up there and if you my advice is if you have the opportunity i would suggest you pilot a solution within your existing facility and even at a smaller scale and even with like one unit um because the the real life pilot would provide you with a lot more that you would never seen from a demo or or from a test lab right i think that's probably number one and the second one is you need to involve end users you need to involve clinicians and stakeholders during the selection and the pilot process because their active participation uh is a it's a critical to ensure uh the technology truly meets their needs right that's fantastic i think you know we've asked a lot of the experts on the show a very similar question for their particular industry and it all resonates around the same principles so so i think you know it's very well vetted now that that is the exact approach you should be taking to get started on your iog iot journey to ensure the best chance of success so this has been fantastic i appreciate you taking the time here to share um kind of the insights into the smart hospital space also with with what you all are doing at your hospitals is there anything um new or exciting coming out on your end or maybe from mckenzie health that we should be on the lookout for we could pay attention to to kind of see new deployments of technology new solutions you're you're building uh to solve certain problems there anything that's just you know on the horizon that may be worth following on yeah so basically we opened a new hospital uh okay i think less than six months ago and we are kind of in a state to make sure our solutions are being optimized for the next stage and um obviously we're looking to additional integration uh for example we want to uh reroute some of the alerts through our uh unified communication systems and we will look into different op opportunities uh up there and um and uh to fully utilize uh those platforms so we want to look in focus on more on uh uh to add more value from the existing investment right rather than deploy a brand new system so this is where we want to look into and focus in the next few years that's fantastic yeah that approach is is a good one you know we've talked to a lot of companies about how they're able once they start building down or going down an iot path they're able to build on top of it as opposed to starting new solutions from scratch and basically just continue to create a smarter better environment and it sounds like that's the exact path you're on which is which is great um last question before i let you go and if anybody out there is listening and wants to follow up with any questions or maybe wants to dive more into what you all are doing just to learn or chat what's the best way to do that yeah um maybe i can put my email up there so you can just shoot me email my email felix.n at mckinneyhealth.ca
and welcome to any comments any feedbacks or any new ideas awesome well we'll make sure we include that in our description uh we'll link it in in everything that we kind of post about this episode but felix this has been a great conversation a topic we haven't talked a lot about we haven't been able to have any any experts from the hospitals and medical space be on the show so i really appreciate you doing this i've really enjoyed it i think our audience is getting a ton of value out of it you're welcome thank you thank you all right everyone thanks again for watching that episode of the iit fall podcast if you enjoyed the episode please click the thumbs up button subscribe to our channel and be sure to hit the bell notifications so you get the latest episodes as soon as they become available other than that thanks again for watching and we'll see you next time
2022-01-23 01:20
