Smart ease

Things that were moving gradually are now accelerating at AI speed

The healthcare industry is undergoing a profound transformation, fuelled by digital innovation, rising patient need and expectation, and the urgent demand for operational efficiency.

At the heart of this evolution are Smart Hospitals – facilities that harness advanced technologies to enhance patient care, streamline clinical workflows and seamlessly integrate with broader healthcare ecosystems.

While initiatives like England’s New Hospital Programme (NHP), which aims to deliver four waves of new hospital construction between now and 2040 with 16 new hospitals in the first wave by 2030, are accelerating adoption, the Smart Hospital concept extends far beyond new construction.

True transformation requires more than simply layering new technologies onto existing systems; it demands a fundamental reimagining of clinical pathways, data architecture and patient engagement models.

Healthcare systems worldwide are under immense pressure. In 2022, about 19% of the population were aged 65 or over in the UK, and according to the Office for National Statistics’ population projections, by 2072 this could rise to 27% of the population.

Ageing populations come with an increase in the prevalence of chronic diseases that will in turn drive up demand for care. Meanwhile, our ability to meet this demand is under pressure.

According to a 2022 NHS workforce survey, 34% of participants reported feeling burned out because of their work, over 37% found it emotionally exhausting, and NHS Workforce Statistics reported a vacancy rate of 7.2% in December 2024.

These issues come at a time when healthcare is under increasing financial constraints. A 2024 survey of NHS Trust leaders found that over half of respondents were extremely concerned about delivering operational priorities within their organisation’s 2024-25 financial budget, and 92% felt that the scale of the efficiency challenge had increased from the previous year.

Smart Hospitals aim to address these challenges by enhancing efficiency through a variety of new technologies such as AI-driven diagnostics, predictive analytics and automation. These new technologies will help reduce administrative burdens and free up clinicians to focus on patient care.

As noted previously, the NHP is playing a pivotal role in accelerating Smart Hospital adoption in the UK. However, its ambitions extend far beyond bricks and mortar.

The programme emphasises standardised digital blueprints for new hospitals, seamless interoperability between health and social care systems, and the combinatorial deployment of technologies where multiple innovations work in concert to transform entire care pathways.

It is crucial to recognise though that the Smart Hospital concept is not exclusive to new builds. Existing facilities can undergo meaningful digital transformation by re-engineering workflows rather than merely adding new technologies.

This involves adopting modular scalable solutions such as AI-assisted imaging and IoT-enabled patient monitoring systems, all while prioritising robust cybersecurity and data governance frameworks.

Trusts considering adopting the Smart Hospital concept are asked to consider 49 transformative technologies, known as Intelligent Hospital Capabilities within NHP.
These can be applied to three key categories.

The first is fabric, which encompasses the underlying infrastructure like IoT and smart building systems such as lights and temperature controls.

The second is footprint, which focuses on optimising the patient journey through tools like digital front door and centralised command centres.

And the third is flow, which ensures seamless integration with broader healthcare ecosystems such as social care and social services using predictive analytics and federated learning models.

Among the most critical innovations are AI and machine learning, which are already making an impact in areas such as automated diagnostics, evidenced by NHS Scotland’s use of AI in breast cancer screening to detect abnormalities that might otherwise be missed.

Other significant technologies include digital twins that are virtual replicas of hospital environments. These are being used to optimise space utilisation and predict patient surges. Command centres are another crucial element of any Smart Hospital architecture; these act as nerve hubs for real-time bed management and staff allocation.

Robotics and automation are also playing a growing role, from autonomous drug carts to AI-powered surgical assistants, all supported by stringent cybersecurity measures that ensure resilience even during breaches.

What’s vital in the development of a Smart Hospital is to ensure seamless technology integration, weaving technologies into a cohesive framework where they reinforce rather than conflict with one another.

For instance, combining a command centre with AI-driven predictive analytics and IoT-enabled patient beds can lead to exponential improvements in patient flow and operational efficiency.

Like any large IT-driven transformation, delivering Smart Hospitals is easier said than done. Financial and organisational constraints remain significant barriers, requiring phased rollouts and careful change management to ensure clinician buy-in.

Data architecture and interoperability pose another major challenge. Integrating disparate data streams, from smart building sensors to electronic health records, demands new governance models, with pseudonymisation serving as a default to balance innovation with patient privacy.

Ensuring cybersecurity is critical; earlier this year, an NHS software provider was fined £3m for a breach that put personal information at risk. Hospitals must adopt zero-trust security frameworks while ensuring operational continuity during incidents.

Finally, the rapid pace of technological change means that what seems innovative today could very quickly become legacy in a few years. Continuous innovation requires dedicated digital transformation teams to bridge the gap between cutting-edge advancements and real-world clinical applications.

There is no such thing as future-proof IT, but building agile processes will enable healthcare providers to be flexible and scale with new technology as and when it becomes available.

The NHP’s ambitious vision for Smart Hospitals sets a high bar, and the UK’s strengths in clinical research, particularly in genomics and AI diagnostics, provide a strong foundation. However, operational inefficiencies in administration and workflow management remain persistent hurdles.

For now at least, the UK occupies a middle ground in the global Smart Hospital landscape – neither a clear leader nor a laggard, but with unique potential. Smart Hospitals present healthcare providers with a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do something truly amazing for local communities and society at large.

We are already helping to shape the future of Smart Hospitals; for example, our work with Canada’s Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital has helped introduce IoT-connected systems to enable real-time interventions such as smart beds auto-adjusting during cardiac events, and demonstrate what’s possible.

While in the UK, we’re working with NHP Wave 1 Trusts such as Mid Cheshire NHS Foundation Trust and North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust to design the digital capabilities of their new hospitals and deliver a roadmap that will ensure adoption of these transformational technologies before the new hospital is opened and the first patients seen.

Looking ahead, Smart Hospitals will likely see care become increasingly decentralised, with more services delivered at home through virtual wards. AI will become ubiquitous, powering everything from predictive outbreak modelling to autonomous robotic surgeries, while sustainability will be woven into hospital design through AI-driven energy management.

The NHP’s first wave of hospitals will serve as global benchmarks, proving that combinatorial technology deployment can revolutionise care delivery.

For healthcare IT buyers, the imperative is clear: the hospitals of the future are being designed today. The question is no longer if healthcare will digitally transform, but how fast, and how wisely, it will happen.