Three Scandinavian hospitals using Systematic's software are in the top 25 of 250 hospitals worldwide, leading in integrating and using new, smart technology.
In collaboration with the data research firm Statista Inc, the American news magazine Newsweek has compiled a list of 250 of the world's best and smartest hospitals – the 'World's Best Smart Hospitals 2021'.
Smart hospitals are particularly good at using data and technology to improve how they treat patients and perform daily hospital tasks. And this is precisely where Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm and the two Danish university hospitals in Aarhus and Aalborg excel. Common to all three hospitals – which are ranked 1, 4, and 6 in Europe – is that they use Systematic's software to plan and optimize their hospital operations.
How is Systematic Romania contributing to this success
At Systematic Romania, the Healthcare department has more than 35 colleagues working in close collaboration with the team from Denmark. Our focus is to ensure that our products offer a state-of-the-art documentation model while helping medical staff coordinate more efficiently while providing a high quality of care and treatment to the patients.
Lucian Maican, General Manager at Systematic Romania, says:
"Patients, staff and management value the Columna suite because it ensures increased patient safety, effective treatment and data-driven management.
Our healthcare solutions include applications that provide clinicians with access to an extensive electronic medical record for patients, aiming to provide optimal physician productivity and effectiveness through complete clinical data management.
We have also developed a workflow solution for planning, execution and follow-up on clinical and service tasks, providing real-time asset tracking of medical equipment and hospital staff.
Our MDI-VNA solution ensures integrated data capture from medical devices for quick, confident, and consistent care. Having access to a significant number of medical observations from a considerable number of patients proved to be efficient in controlling the pandemic impact.
Quickly adapting our solution helped us build up the Danish national solution for contact tracing of COVID-19 positive cases and their close contacts in just a few months. This is the primary tool for the Danish Health Authorities in managing the COVID-19 efforts, and it is used 24x7 by more than 3.000 users.
All the pillars above are embedded in the Columna suite and contribute to the digitalization of hospitals and the Healthcare system.
Patients are expected and welcome
Aarhus University Hospital is ranked as the 4th best smart hospital in Europe and 19th in the world.
According to Jørgen Schøler Kristensen, Chief Medical Officer, the hospital's extensive use of data makes it possible to give patients a feeling that they are expected and welcome.
"When a patient comes to be treated by us – whether planned or an emergency – the healthcare professionals can easily find the patient's medical records and look at their medical history, previous courses of treatment and other relevant information. This means that our patients feel both expected and welcome, which is important for a good, safe and reassuring course of treatment," explains Jørgen Schøler Kristensen.
The COVID-19 pandemic in particular has shed light on how many resources can be saved by using data in daily hospital operations.
"Well-functioning IT systems enable us to handle crises like COVID-19 more effectively. We've been using digital logistics systems to control patient flow, which has been a great help for patients and staff alike. Not just at one hospital but across all the hospitals in the region with real-time overviews. We've also seen the advantages of being able to make changes quickly in the IT systems so that they support the new conditions in a crisis."
Digitalizing hospitals frees up time for patients
At Aalborg University Hospital, which ranks six on the list of Europe's best smart hospitals, there is a clear strategy for working with digitalization and how healthcare professionals should work smartly in the future.
Klaus Larsen, IT director at North Denmark Region, says:
"When we work with data, we reduce the risk of human error. A large database, for example, allows doctors to predict complex disease pathways and make informed decisions on the most appropriate treatment for a citizen-based on the data we have at our disposal. This means that fewer patients are discharged prematurely, which results in fewer readmissions," he says.
According to Klaus Larsen, treating patients well reflects that the more digitalized the hospital, the more time the hospital staff have for patients.
"Digitalization is more about people than about technology. We talk about automation, data and monitoring in the health sector, but we're only doing so because it provides our patients with better, safer and more effective treatments. It may seem paradoxical, but the more we digitalize and automate the health sector, the more time hospital staff will have to attend closely to the citizen," says Klaus Larsen.
Citizen-centered solutions
Aarhus University Hospital and Aalborg University Hospital benefit greatly from Systematic's Columna solutions, which provides staff with overviews of each patient's treatment and medication while also managing tasks such as blood sampling and the transport of patients and equipment. Columna provides staff with a list of which tasks need to be performed, where they are to be carried out, and which tasks are most urgent on their smartphones. In this way, jobs are efficiently and appropriately completed while at the same time minimizing the distances employees have to walk and saving time by assigning the tasks which lie closest.
"There is no doubt that smart solutions like Columna CIS and Columna Flow are helping the hospitals – and leading to greater peace of mind and safety for patients. In the past, the hospital staff was interrupted to a far greater extent in the course of their working day. Back then, telephones rang continuously in everyone's pockets, from porters to bioanalysis as they moved patients around or were busy taking blood samples. Today, employees can stay focused on the patient and their work, as task assignments tick into a list that can be accessed on smartphones once they've finished what they're doing. This improves the overall experience for patients and is less stressful for employees," explains Henrik Jespersen, Group Senior Vice President at Systematic.
More about Systematic and Columna suites can be accessed here