Wary U.S. Doctors May Block the Rise of Smart Hospitals
A smart hospital market estimated to reach $55 billion by 2023 needs to win over physicians first
Alexa is already our therapist, secretary, teacher, and playmate. She may soon become our doctor and nurse as well. In early 2019, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia each rolled out pilot hospital smart rooms. In them, patients could use a smart speaker — an internet-connected electronic device capable of operating semi-autonomously and interactively — to ask about visiting hours and meal times, give commands to adjust the TV channel, and use the device as they would at home. The hospitals hoped it would cut down the significant amount of time medical practitioners spent dealing with non-urgent patient queries, while raising patient satisfaction with their standard of care — and it did.
The global smart hospital market, which encompasses medical devices interconnected through the Internet of Things (IoT), together with medical applications of A.I. and machine learning, is by one estimate expected to reach $55.76 billion by 2023. These smart devices include surgical tools that give real-time feedback to the operator, a sensor-equipped feeding system for premature babies, and even the wearables patients…
