Digital Hospital ; An Example of Best Practice

Digital Hospital is a concept contributing to enhancing personnelproductivity, facilitating hospital operations, improving the process qualityand ensuring patient safety by integrating cutting-edge technologies such asmedical devices, smart information systems, facility control and automaticconveyor systems, location-based services, sensors and digitalcommunication tools into health processes. The primary aim of this study isto address the theoretical and practical aspects of “Digital (paperless)hospital” concept, which is addressed in a limited number of studies, andinvestigate the digital hospital practices of Izmir Tire Public Hospital andGiresun Tirebolu Public Hospital, which entered into the list of top digitalhospitals in Europe as examples of best practices. The study was preparedbased on the interviews with the managers of Tire Public Hospital andTirebolu Public Hospital awarded with digital hospital certificates byHIMMS (International Accrediting Agency) in 2016.18 hospitals received “Stage 6” and one hospital (Tire Public Hospital)received the top-level “Stage 7” digital hospital certificate, which wasawarded to four hospitals in Europe by 2016 in Turkey. In the hospitaltransforming into a top level digital hospital and offering services with thisconcept; speed and efficiency of business processes increase, paper anddocument expenses are cut to zero, human-made errors are minimized.Diagnosis and treatment processes are provided not only within the hospitalwalls but also to long distances. By the help of digital hospitals health dataare immediately and retrospectively retrieved at any time by the authorizedbody, other health institutions and patients and can be forwarded viasensors, cameras and early warning systems without requiring follow-up byhumans, fast and right decisions can be given thanks to decision supportsystems, and the right medicine is administered to the right patient, at rightdoses and at the right time by the Closed Loop Drug Delivery System. Withthe widespread access to digital hospitals, it will be possible to benefit fromall these advantages and offer the most effective and efficient healthcareservices to the patients within the shortest time. Hospital personnel will haveless workload and be less likely to make mistakes.