Integrating Intelligent Building Systems in Healthcare Facilities

Technology in healthcare is advancing at such a rapid pace that it often feels like our current medical spaces are incapable of evolving alongside the never-ending onslaught of innovation. Thankfully, that’s rarely the case. Unlocking the benefits of information technology in healthcare environments is a complex undertaking, but it’s something that healthcare organizations need to be planning for today if they want to stay nimble in the future.

This article explores the role of facility management and process automation technology in healthcare, the benefits of integrating today’s intelligent building systems and technologies, and the critical considerations and challenges for organizations to address.

AI, smart building tech, and integrated data systems are transforming healthcare—improving patient care, boosting efficiency, and enabling smarter decision-making. Plus, smart building solutions like AI-powered HVAC, automated lighting, and inventory control reduce costs and inefficiencies across entire portfolios. As healthcare organizations work to integrate new technologies with existing systems, the goal is to ensure facilities are future-ready while enhancing the experience for patients, staff, and families, improving daily operations, and enable data-informed strategic decision-making. The key is using technology to drive progress, not just keep up, ensuring facilities stay ahead of the curve and aligned with business goals.

The promise of intelligent building technologies in healthcare environments

In healthcare, future-proofing starts with understanding how interconnected technology systems interact with physical healthcare environments and how intelligent building strategies can benefit the entire organization.

Modern hospitals may use 50+ technology systems for operations, patient care, and financial management, with this number expected to grow. These systems generate data, but many remain disconnected at the enterprise level, and legacy systems may not always be the best solutions. Complexity and lack of integration are often accepted as the norm, as healthcare leaders balance technological adoption with competing priorities, like worker shortages, patient competition, carbon reduction, and funding allocation.

New technologies aren’t a competition for resources but solutions to these challenges, driving efficiencies and better outcomes. Smart buildings automate tasks, reduce burnout, and give patients more visibility into treatment plans. Internet-connected systems improve efficiency, support net-zero goals, and lower operational risks and costs.

To better understand the role of technology in healthcare and its transformative potential, it is useful to explore the four major categories of relevant technologies and how healthcare organizations are using them in driving patient experience, facilities management, data-driven operations, and clinical care technology.

• Patient experience technology is driven by the goal to improve the consumer’s experience, providing easier intake, enabling patient-centered care, and creating a seamless care journey inside and outside the hospital. Several examples of using technology include leveraging RFID systems to allow outpatients to “wait” for their appointments in a decentralized waiting location – like a coffee shop within the health facility – or allow the patient in an inpatient setting to control their environment (lights, music, shades, and communications devices) not unlike a five-star hotel experience. In addition, properly integrating Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) across multiple caregivers provides a comprehensive, real-time view of a patient’s entire medical history, enabling truly personalized care. This approach ensures caregivers access critical information, enhancing intervention speed and accuracy while reducing risks like medication interactions. Automating administrative tasks also frees up time, allowing staff to focus more on patient care.
  
• Facilities management technology improves the day-to-day physical operation of healthcare spaces, making the maintenance of and experience in healthcare environments better and more efficient. This category of technology, which is designed to be less noticeable to the typical hospital visitor, still offers a significant positive impact on their experience. For example, hospitals are using smart building technology to improve air quality, HVAC efficiency, equipment maintenance, access control, comfort for patients and staff, and other similar activities.
  
• Data-driven business planning technology: As healthcare systems face increasing competition, leveraging data to anticipate service demand is key to driving revenue and improving efficiency. By integrating patient-centric data with non-medical hospital data, organizations can make smarter decisions across all departments. For example, patient data can help forecast cafeteria needs by predicting the number of meals to be ordered, optimizing food preparation, and minimizing waste. Similarly, connecting patient data with visitor information can improve hospital operations by helping parking lot staff anticipate peak times and manage traffic flow, ensuring smoother visitor experiences.
  
  Machine learning can uncover patterns and correlations across these large data sets, enabling business strategists to forecast service needs, allocate resources for preventative care, and identify opportunities for cost savings—all while improving patient outcomes. Of course, this process must rely on anonymized and aggregated data to protect patient privacy and avoid legal or compliance issues.
  
• Clinical care technologies. All the data generated by clinical care technologies and equipment—such as patient diagnostics, treatment plans, and operational metrics—needs to be stored and operationalized in a centralized system to enable truly integrated, predictive care. Clinical technologies, like medical devices and imaging equipment, play a vital role in patient outcomes. While many devices don’t impact healthcare space design, others—like MRI machines—do, due to their size and weight. Facilities must be designed not only for current needs but also to accommodate future upgrades. This includes planning for equipment movement and ensuring data from these systems integrates seamlessly into a broader infrastructure that supports predictive care and operational efficiency.
  
  One of the fastest emerging technological uses of AI is in the movement of materials (linens, medications, instruments, etc) within the hospital facility leveraging robotics in the form of autonomous vehicles.  These systems address the five “D’s” of materials handling operations (dirty, dull, dear, difficult, and dangerous) in a positive manner.

For a hospital to be truly intelligent, all—or at least the vast majority—of a facility’s existing data needs to be captured and stored within the holistic healthcare ecosystem, without the need for human staff to carry out repetitive manual data reconciliation. While investing in any category can be beneficial, the true benefits of a technology-connected and enabled environment can only be realized when all systems work together.

The business case

Investing in integrated technology systems improves patient care and enhances business performance, profitability, and operational efficiency across all areas of healthcare. These business performance benefits come in three primary categories: cost savings, maintenance and operations, and risk reduction.

• Cost savings: Financial savings can be achieved via technology that minimizes energy consumption (and therefore cost), reduces waste, improves productivity, and optimizes operational efficiency. Many of these same systems also support environmental sustainability and carbon reduction goals. For example, as previously outlined –  AI and robotics are significantly contributing to cost savings in multiple ways, including doing work that would, in the past, require human intervention to manage procurement and optimize the supply chain. AI systems and robotic devices can contribute to the internal transportation of materials; assist with quality control; perform disinfection; forecast demand for services and even handle basic customer service tasks (think: chatbots).
  
  While technology investments do require capital, the time required to achieve return for smart building investments is also accelerating. In the past, typical smart building investments would pay for themselves over 10 or 12 years. Today, the cost of installation has gone down significantly, with break-even points averaging between 6 and 7 years. Some facilities even see ROI in as little as 4 years.
  
  A recent real-life example of these efficiencies in action can be seen in the new, 1.2 million square-foot Niagara Health System in Canada, which is in the process of launching a smart hospital information system. Along with providing medical practitioners easy and streamlined digital access to patients’ histories, the smart technology in this facility automates energy usage, temperature, humidity and lighting throughout the hospital, reducing overall energy consumption and costs. Staffing issues have been alleviated by implementing an automated shift-fill system, giving medical staff back precious time to tend to patient needs. As a result of these and other efficiencies, Niagara Health System is looking at a 6-year break-even point for its intelligent tech, resulting in tens of millions of dollars over a 30-year planning period.
  
• Maintenance and operations: Maintenance and operational improvements come from technologies that improve equipment performance, provide predictive and prescriptive maintenance guidance, decrease occurrences of building system disruptions, and help facilitate lifecycle cost planning.
  
  The technology in medical settings includes sensors and smart meters that continuously collect vast amounts of data on equipment performance, environmental conditions, and operational metrics. When collected and actioned correctly, AI systems can be leveraged to analyze trends and develop algorithms to predict when maintenance is needed or when equipment is at risk of failure. By leveraging real-time monitoring, hospitals can proactively address issues before they become critical, optimize energy and water use, and improve overall operational efficiency. These predictive insights not only enhance facility management but also help create a more sustainable and responsive healthcare environment.
  
  At the patient-level, poor management of air quality, temperature and humidity in a hospital can slow patient recovery or compromise the sterility of rooms and equipment. Smart buildings with environmental sensors paired with state-of-the-art HVAC systems make real-time adjustments to temperature, humidity, and rate of air exchange based on factors from room occupancy to virus detection and more.
  
• Risk reduction: Technology can be used in multiple ways to significantly reduce financial, regulatory and operational risk. Physical security is always on the minds of healthcare executives, and smart building access control technologies can help protect sensitive areas such as nurseries and pharmacies that shouldn’t be accessible to anyone but essential personnel.
  
  Automated, AI-powered security systems are increasingly being used in hospitals to enhance safety and reduce risk. These systems can monitor voice tone and volume levels in real-time, analyzing patterns of human activity throughout the facility. By detecting sudden changes in tone or escalated volume, the system can predict potential security issues, such as conflicts or disturbances, before they escalate. When a potential threat is identified, the system alerts security teams, enabling them to intervene swiftly and prevent problems from worsening.
  
  IoT technologies, such as sensors and smart meters, can reduce equipment failure and inventory risks while lowering legal, financial, and operational risks. Standardized software across healthcare systems enhances cybersecurity by ensuring clear data protection, security, and privacy protocols. Automated monitoring can prevent cyberattacks, while air quality systems help prevent disease spread and reduce risks to patients and staff.

Future-proofing technology: challenges and critical considerations

The journey to the intelligent healthcare facility of the future isn’t a simple one; integrating 50+ communications/information technology systems, choosing vendors and platforms, designing and building new spaces and ensuring flexibility for unknown developments to come is no small task. However, the benefits of integrating intelligent building technology are so numerous and substantial that organizations that don’t take steps to adopt this tech now are in fact creating a new challenge: the risk of being left behind.

But that doesn’t mean that deploying this technology is something healthcare organizations can or should rush into. Here are some primary considerations to keep in mind as you evaluate your organization’s plan for transitioning from your current technology stack to the ideal future state:

• Medical equipment: Technology is not just a standalone system; medical technology extends far beyond building systems and internet-enabled devices. Making equipment and technology purchasing decisions inevitably comes with design and construction considerations for healthcare owners and operators. A common concern is that many end users will want to wait as long as possible to acquire the newest, most advanced machines and systems available. But waiting for a new model can delay other aspects of a project, ultimately pushing back timelines and increasing costs.
  
  To create the best outcomes, designs should incorporate as much flexibility as possible in-patient rooms and service areas, considering both the space usage and ongoing maintenance alongside the question of how to best integrate new equipment into the built environment.
  
• Data collection and sources: Data collection is central to smart hospital operations, but with diverse systems and inputs, it’s challenging to determine what data is needed and for what purpose. System owners must carefully plan to align current tech needs with future flexibility, ensuring data integrates smoothly with existing systems and complies with privacy regulations
  
  Consider the sources you’re collecting the data from, where it’s stored, and how it can and should be socialized across disparate technology systems. For example, thoughtful compilation of data “silos”, normalization of data across functions, and connecting them across data types – such as patient-originated data and cafeteria needs forecasting – can help uncover entirely new ways at reducing cost, improving business efficiency, and providing differentiated levels of patient services.
  
• Project timelines: Planning for intelligent healthcare building technology implementations should begin well before construction starts. While every organization wants their space equipped with the latest innovations, technology decisions should be connected directly to the foundational vision behind a project and support the ideal end-state for running the business.
  
  There must be a balance between anticipating technological advancements and making informed decisions at the appropriate point in the development or redevelopment timeline. That said, it’s never too early to start!
  
  Here are a few steps to help guide the technology integration process from the beginning:
  
  • Step 1 – Systems audit: Prior to the programming and the early design phase of a project, the first step for creating a functional and future-proof smart building is to compile a list of all the different systems that will be at play in the facility or across the medical campus. Identify the impact of legacy systems on project decisions; some are easily integrated with newer systems while others are completely proprietary.
    
  • Step 2 – Prioritization: Create a framework to prioritize technology selection and space build-out, using ROI and business cases for decision-making. Ensure all existing systems are managed so data flows seamlessly across the healthcare ecosystem without manual reconciliation. When implementing new systems, prioritize ease of integration with legacy systems while weighing the benefits of new technology.
    
  • Step 3 – Technology interaction plan: Next, create a plan for how each system would ideally communicate or interact with the others with a focus on patient care and operational efficiencies. Selecting a proprietary or siloed system or component now may limit scalability of your platform later.
    
  • Step 4 – Immediate investments: Think through healthcare technology needs that can be purchased and adopted now and will be flexible enough to continue to evolve with your future investments. 
    
  • Step 5 – Redundancy during change: Make a plan for technology and building system redundancy that is secure and helps protect against downtime.

Act now to achieve the benefits of healthcare intelligent building technology

Now is the right time to start moving toward an integrated system of intelligent healthcare facilities. If you’re hesitating because of concerns about rapid technological change, it’s important to weigh the potential cost of delaying progress.

Better patient outcomes, cost savings and other benefits await! There’s endless potential for the built environment to deliver intelligent buildings with technology systems that ultimately help care providers, staff and patients achieve safer, more positive experiences—and help to achieve better outcomes.

Connect with the authors of this article:
Eric Hoffman, Vice President, National Healthcare Sector Lead
Doug King, Vice President, Healthcare Sector
Liz Page, Project Director