99 Changes You Will See in the Hospital of the Future

One of my friends who is writing a book, asked me if I could write a chapter on the future of hospitals and how they will look and function in the future. I started making some quick mental notes and then I jotted them down on paper. I came up with 99 things that will be different in the Hospital of the Future. Without much ado, here is the first draft of the list. Please add to this list in the comments section.

On demand access for the patient 1. Access to information 2. Access to care providers 3. Access to family Expanding and re-imagining the space 4. Making hospital more like home 5. Bringing hospital closer to home 6. Making the home into a hospital Concentration of care in the Hospital 7. Acute care 8. Complex care 9. High intensity care Centers of excellence 10. Specialist physician services 11. Specialty technology services 12. Data science intensive services Increased information exchange 13. Between doctors and staff 14. Between staff and patient 15. Between staff and patient’s family Change in work 16. More team based 17. More technology driven 18. More patient centered Behavioral health services 19. Integrated with other services 20. Part of all services 21. Using technology to nudge behavior Medical records 22. Ubiquitous 23. Secure and private 24. Patient controlled Surgical Operations 25. Less invasive 26. Fast recovery and short length of stay 27. High tech enabled Information technology 28. Automation 29. Self service 30. Allows for up-skilling of staff Focus on other patient needs 31. Social 32. Emotional 33. Spiritual Data becomes 34. Real-time 35. Inter-operable 36. Intelligent Algorithms will provide knowledge 37. Descriptive analytics 38. Predictive analytics 39. Prescriptive analytics Hospitals buildings will become 40. Smaller 41. More high tech 42. More virtual Improved efficiency 43. In time 44. In space 45. In effort Social networks will be used by staff and patients for 46. Marketing 47. Brand building 48. Service rating Technology will be 49. Wireless 50. Voice enabled 51. Invisible New science skills in the hospital 52. Data scientist 53. Physician scientist 54. Social scientist Focus on patient experience 55. Before hospitalization 56. During hospitalization 57. After hospitalization Improvement in physician performance 58. Burnout reduced 59. Balance fine tuned 60. Focus on physician experience Hospital building design 61. Eco-friendly 62. Open layout 63. Closer to Nature Changes with time 64. Aging population 65. Complexity of procedures 66. New diseases Payment focused on 67. Quality data 68. Outcomes data 69. Satisfaction data Customers will find care to be 70. No out of pocket costs 71. More convenient 72. More comfortable New technologies 73. 3-D printing of organs 74. Augmented and virtual reality 75. Automatic error prevention Technology framework to include 76. Cloud based and location agnostic 77. Inter-operable smart electronic health records 78. Sensor agnostic Internet of things More New Technologies 79. Machine learning and artificial intelligence 80. Mobile monitoring 81. Robot assistants Staffing changes 82. Increase in higher skilled 83. Decrease in admin level staffing 84. Increase in hands on care providers Disappearance from hospitals of 85. Palliative care/hospice beds 86. Medical/surgical beds 87. Observation beds Medical Transportation 88. Self-driving vehicles 89. Automated triage to the right facility 90. Treatment team in the vehicle New venues taking patients away from hospitals 91. Stand-alone centers 92. Hospital in homes 93. Nursing homes Insurance changes 94. Payer/provider partnerships 95. Full risk value-based care model 96. Increase in catastrophic insurance National networks 97. Specialty-based networks 98. Technology-based networks 99. Payer-based networks