Smart hospital solution: digital technologies enables quicker, better care
(Posted March 2024) When a patient really needs to get to a hospital, every second matters. It can mean the difference between life and death. Supported by digital technologies, hospital resources can get to the patient as soon as the ambulance arrives. With nearly instant transmission of data, Huawei's smart hospital solution enables doctors and specialists at the hospital to participate in the patient’s treatment remotely via live video feeds and monitoring of detailed vitals.
See how 5G and other digital technologies have transformed Guangdong Second Provincial General Hospital's emergency responses and the rest of its operations
Huawei delivered a complete smart hospital ICT solution to Guangdong Second Provincial General Hospital in Guangzhou. Once a patient is picked up, first responders not only hook up the patient to various sensors, they also admit him or her to the hospital so that no time is wasted upon arrival. Real-time transmission of ECG records is among the information that the ambulance shares using 5G.
Huang Shuai, a doctor in the Emergency Department of Guangdong Second Provincial General Hospital, notes that “during rescue, we need to race against time to save lives and to prevent medical emergencies from worsening within a short period of time.” In the past, when patients arrived, they needed to complete registration first, and the process took five to 10 minutes, even when done by highly experienced staff. Digital transformation has made the process much smoother and quicker.
At 08:38, one morning in Guangzhou, a hospital is dispatched to an emergency
When a first responder on the ambulance uploads the patient’s information, doctors and specialists at the hospital can see it immediately. This enables them to ready drugs and devices for immediate treatment upon arrival. When the situation requires multiple areas of expertise, Huawei's hospital solution enables real-time video conferencing between various specialists and the ambulance.
By 08:56, the patient is loaded into the ambulance for treatment
“I got the first injection less than 30 minutes after I arrived at hospital,” recalls a stroke patient who got to the hospital by ambulance during an emergency. “When you have a stroke, if the treatment is not fast enough, you may sustain permanent damage.”
5G in ambulances is only one of the applications of digital technologies at the Hospital. The facility has been working with Huawei since 2019. Smart technologies are applied in different functions including nursing, teaching, research, and management.
Less than 25 minutes after the ambulance's dispatch, the patient is being treated at the hospital
“Smart healthcare solutions have made everything more digital and intelligent,” says Lian Wanmin, Director of the Information Center of Guangdong Second Provincial General Hospital. “When a big transformation is initiated, our IT department will follow it up to make it better,” he adds. “We hope to use intelligent technologies, like AI, Internet, and cloud computing, to develop scenarios-based applications to support our patients, healthcare, and management services.”
It's not just ambulance services that have been digitalized but the whole range of hospital operations, including medical imaging.
So far, wireless Internet access in wards, remote health consultation, diagnosis and treatment, pharmaceutical management, remote visits, test results and many other applications have been integrated into the hospital solution. The application of internet in healthcare platforms on mobile devises also makes registration, payment, admission, and health file management more convenient and faster.
“Looking towards future smart hospitals, we hope they can help make the whole world less burdened by pain and disease,” Lian says. “This is a vision shared by all medical workers.”
