06X - Hedging Your Bets: Lessons in Building the Hospital of the Future From the Ground Up

Monday, March 20

10:00–11:30 a.m.

Digital innovation and capital projects, especially construction, don’t often align in their approach. Digital innovation is agile, ever-changing and iterative. Capital projects take time, are delivered in a waterfall approach, and changes are dreaded and expensive. At the speed at which technology is changing, from the time of the first sketches of the hospital to its opening, technology has a fair chance of becoming obsolete. Today, digital innovation’s impact on healthcare is extending beyond the digital realm and impacting the way hospitals are built and operated.

As an organization that obsesses about innovation, Houston Methodist’s team recognized this mismatch and the cost of getting the technology decisions wrong in a newly built facility. Executive leadership and the Center for Innovation developed a vision for the future and a “future bets” framework to select appropriate technologies. “Future bets” take the technology developments in computer vision, natural language processing, predictive analytics, service robotics, virtual reality and macro trends like healthcare reimbursement and consumer preferences into consideration and predict the impact on design, budgeting, construction and hospital operations.

Presenters will share their “Smart Hospital of the Future” vision, methodology and the partner framework, providing insights into the “future bets” selection process and how to incorporate these bets into architectural designs, budgets, construction processes and organizational culture.

Learning Objectives

• Formulate the methodology for designing the “future bets” for technology selection and determining how these bets interact with design, construction and operational processes.
• Demonstrate the role and importance of culture and change management in building the hospital of the future.