Smart health connected objects in hospitals, for or against?

Smart health connected objects fit into all environments, they represent the future of the Internet but also the future of modern society. It is therefore natural that they integrate the medical community and its hospitals. What about the reliability of these objects? But more precisely, how are they received in this environment where stress and great responsibilities reign?

The program: Digital Hospital

First a few words about the program Digital hospital. The Ministry of Health launched in 2012 the “Digital Hospital” program for encourage hospitals to integrate digital in their habits and make patient data more accessible.

This program is made up of 3 prerequisites: Identities / Movements; Reliability / Availability and Confidentiality, as well as 5 functional areas:

• Imaging, biology and anatomical pathology results,

• Computerized and interoperable patient record,

• Electronic prescription feeding the care plan,

• Resource programming,

• Medico-economic management.

Since its launch three years ago, the number of hospitals that have implemented this system has been constantly increasing. Among other things, the Digital Hospital Wireless, the data and image sharing in real time, enough to help the medical profession. The program also offers better comfort for the patient thanks to a touch screen and a webcam allowing to communicate by Skype but also to learn about his illness using specialized programs. Digital Hospital takes into account better monitoring of patients outside the hospital with a exchange of computer data. The use of digital data therefore refers us directly to the digital data used and collected by smart health connected objects, particularly in the health sector. In addition, the deployment of a compulsory IT service for this program also strengthens the possibility of installing this new technology in healthcare centers.

Hospitals are therefore able to process data and can monitoring the proper functioning of smart health connected devices. It remains to know the costs of these devices but especially the opinion of the medical profession. Indeed, smart health connected objects are far from unanimous in the health field and more precisely in hospitals.

The reception of this new technology by the medical profession

There are various smart health connected objects that can be integrated into hospitals and that may be of particular interest to healthcare professionals.

It is thus possible to use smart health connected patches allowing to monitoring the breathing of the patients or else objects specialized in monitoring, for example the reminder of insulin injections for people with diabetes … The list goes on! Many objects of this type exist and they are all linked to applications allowing to collect all the data and thus monitoring patients. This allows hospital staffhave more time for other patients, those for which no device can support. A saving of time, certainly, but ultimately, what about their use in hospitals?

The makers of these health items, as iHealthLabs explains, are confident in the quality of their products and their functionality. Health professionals must intervene to properly choose the smart health connected devices and adapt them as best as possible to their patients. For this, it is necessary to be well informed about the society from which they come.

It is therefore with this in mind that we wanted to meet health professionals to finally find out their points of view regarding this technology.

To know more, we asked a few questions to staff working in clinics and hospitals. More particularly to internal medicine (last years of medical studies) for both their youth and their fresh vision of a world to which they will bring a lot in the years to come but also for their knowledge of new technologies and their habit in the hospital environment. of the nurses also gave their opinion on smart health connected objects in hospitals, their profession is often recognized to be hard in terms of responsibilities, work and feelings.

Our contacts come from different regions and therefore different hospitals but none use smart health connected objects in their centers. They have not heard of any possible implementation of these devices to monitoring patients in their establishments in order to release healthcare professionals from certain obligations.

When the question ofutility of these devices in the hospital environment is addressed this is the question of reliability is a problem : “It would save time, yes maybe, but you have to check the reliability and be sure of it first” answers Nathalie, nurse. The medical community, and more particularly the hospital environment, is not the most open to practices allowing to trust smart health connected devices which have not yet been tested enough in hospitals.

Regarding the reliability of these devices, the answers are unanimous: “For the reliability of these items, they must be tested and approved before they are actually used in a hospital. The consequences can be terrible! ” insists Eddy, a medical intern.

Health professionals are pretty fearful of setting up smart health connected tools in hospitals. There are health smart health connected objects and health applications specially developed for professionals, but rare are the health professionals who really know them. They always see health smart health connected objects as a means of monitoring their “well-being” at health home but not in hospitals.

Health professionals working in hospitals actually think of the well-being of patients by seeking proof that these objects are reliable, what could be more normal! Some say it would be wise to set up smart health connected systems to the general practitioner before integrating them into a hospital. Indeed, the doctor knows his patients much better and can therefore carefully monitoring and realize whether a smart health smart health connected object is working properly or not.

One of our nurse interlocutors, Anaïs, wished to conclude with this sentence: “When you are in the medical field, you cannot play with lives. If the question of setting up smart health connected objects in a medical center does not come from the top of the chain then no one will take this risk! ”