The healthcare industry is undergoing a profound shift, driven by the need for smart healthcare. This transformation is multifaceted, encompassing the enhancement of patient care, operational efficiency, data management and overall system resilience. The end goal is to revolutionise the way medical services are delivered, managed and experienced.

This is seeing stakeholders, including public and private sector entities, health leaders, doctors and citizens looking for ways to enhance healthcare services; and digital technologies have emerged as the most effective way to reach this goal. Ultimately, this is about the timeliness, convenience and efficiency of the care delivered to patients.

Patient-centric care

Smart healthcare places an emphasis on providing patient-centric care and ensuring hospitals run as efficiently as possible. For example, through the adoption of electronic health records (EHRs), telehealth services and mobile health applications, healthcare providers can offer personalised and accessible care experiences. Patients gain the ability to actively engage in their health management, access medical records and participate in virtual consultations, facilitating a more proactive and collaborative approach to health services.

Streamlining operations is another critical aspect of digital transformation in healthcare. Automation of administrative tasks, appointment scheduling and billing processes not only reduces the burden on healthcare professionals but also leads to significant cost savings. The integration of digital technologies can optimise resource utilisation, enhance workflow efficiency and minimise administrative overheads, enabling healthcare entities to allocate resources more effectively.

Seamless interoperability

Smart healthcare facilitates seamless interoperability and data exchange among different healthcare systems and providers. The integration of disparate systems through standardised protocols ensures that patient information is readily available across the healthcare continuum. This interoperability enhances care coordination, reduces duplication of tests and procedures and provides a comprehensive view of a patient’s medical history, contributing to better-informed decision-making by healthcare professionals.

In addition, as the healthcare sector embraces smart solutions, ensuring the security and privacy of patient information becomes paramount. Part of this means of robust cybersecurity measures and compliance frameworks to safeguard sensitive healthcare data. This not only protects patient confidentiality but also builds trust among both healthcare professionals and the patients they look after.

Medical research and innovation are also accelerated by facilitating the analysis of large datasets, collaboration among researchers, and the development of advanced technologies. Cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and machine learning enable researchers to discover new patterns, potential treatments, and therapeutic approaches. This not only expedites the pace of medical breakthroughs but also contributes to the continuous improvement of healthcare practices.

True healthcare transformation

By working towards the fulfilment of these mandates, health industry leaders and all stakeholders are making strides towards successful healthcare transformation. Smart healthcare and hospital digitalisation is happening through the implementation of wireless and fixed network infrastructure, as well as the adoption of healthcare service network platforms, device connectivity, mobile tracking and remote monitoring. Digital medical services, mobile hospitals and patient support applications, mobile communities for collaboration, supervision and medical case management also form part of the changing approach. With these challenges in mind, Huawei and Altron are on a mission to build fully-connected, intelligent healthcare organisations. Huawei has developed a cutting-edge wireless healthcare infrastructure platform that is helping medical practitioners and leaders to provide a well-rounded, fully connected healthcare system to patients. They are also exploring options and developing ideas on how to integrate digital technologies into new healthcare facilities, and to better support patients by continuously meeting their evolving needs.

More efficient services

Huawei’s Smart Healthcare IoT Solution address a range of healthcare challenges. It features built-in IoT card and IoT convergence, making medical services more efficient.

For example, hospitals are able to use these technologies for infusion management. The solution detects the infusion status of patients and sends information to the host computer at the nurse workstation. When detecting infusion completion, the infusion alarm device stops infusing fluids while reporting an alarm.

Huawei also prevents issues such as infant abduction. Its electronic security tag is used for exchanging data with exit monitors and RFID receivers, sending information such as exit monitor IDs to RFID receivers. The receivers can be embedded in an AP as a built-in card or connected to an AP through the USB port as an external USB module. The electronic wrist strap works with the infant security tags and causes no harm to infant skin.

This helps hospitals to avoid major medical malpractice and security accidents and enhances their management capabilities and patient satisfaction.

Additionally, hospitals need to manage important medical assets. Manual asset management and inventory are time-consuming, expensive, and boring. Hospitals want to leverage technology means for asset location and management to reduce management costs and complexity.

Huawei’s solution uses technology for asset location and management to monitor medical assets, prevent asset loss and save on labour costs. It also re-uses the existing WLAN as a healthcare IoT, reducing healthcare IoT deployment and maintenance costs, and facilitating central network management by administrators.

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