AdventHealth's smart rooms enable, not dampen, human connection

Building out AdventHealth's smart hospital room

AdventHealth didn't want to build space-age hospital rooms overflowing with health technology for the sake of technology. That could run the risk of harming the patient experience by letting IT replace human connection.

Still, hospital room design needs to catch up to the health IT trends defining 2026, McKinnis explained.

"I've been a doctor for a long time, since 2000, and until recently, the rooms have changed very little," she remarked. "The hospital room has been the hospital room, and we somehow magically expect the patients to keep track of all the information about their care."

The health system's smart room technology encompasses three central parts, each implemented to help promote patient engagement and patient safety.

Foremost are the computer vision cameras, which allow for virtual care, telehealth consults and family caregiver engagement. This function makes it easier for care teams to include all relevant parties, including family members or medical interpreters, without having to chase everyone down to meet in-person.

That's particularly beneficial for older adults who might have adult children living in different parts of the country. McKinnis noted that it can be a highlight of a patient's day when the care team dials out to someone's child to include them in care or simply visit.

Next, the rooms feature digital whiteboards.

"For time and eternity, hospitals have had manual whiteboards where somebody's using a dry erase marker and trying to write things that are important about the patient's care team, but often that is not entirely up-to-date and requires humans in the loop to remember to do all the right things," McKinnis said.

Digital whiteboards feed directly in from the EHR and provide information about a patient's care team, the schedule for tests and services that day and even notes about the patient's own priorities for care.

AdventHealth's final smart hospital room technology isn't actually in the room -- it's outside.

Digital door signs, which also feed from EHR data, have taken the place of the papers and clipboards historically kept outside the patient's room. The digital signs display information about isolation precautions or special patient needs all in the effort to keep the patient safe.

Engaging patients in smart hospital room design

Deciding on these three smart room technologies was a multidisciplinary effort, McKinnis shared. The health system consulted with clinicians and other staff members to understand which tools could help them streamline patient care.

But perhaps most important was consultation with patients and family members. Throughout the construction of demo rooms, patients and families were able to provide feedback, helping AdventHealth tailor the technology.

Patient and family feedback also let AdventHealth to ensure every tool used in the smart hospital room ultimately served the patient.

"We want to make sure this isn't about more technology hanging on the patient's wall," McKinnis stated. "At the end of the day, it really should be improving both the patient's experience, your clinician experience and improving care quality."

Enhancing, not replacing, human connection

McKinnis acknowledged that the public might be wary of smart hospital rooms.

When patients are hospitalized, they often crave warm, human connection, and a digital takeover of their hospital rooms might get in the way of that. To add insult to injury, older adults sometimes have lower digital health literacy, which some fear might isolate them in a smart hospital room.

Combatting those concerns has been an important patient education and awareness effort, starting foremost with AdventHealth's patient and family advisors who got the first looks at the smart room demos.

According to McKinnis, that process enabled the health system to demonstrate how smart hospital rooms come together to support patients' access to their health information.

"When patients realize that we're trying to get the right information and the right people to them at the right time, then suddenly whatever reticence they might have about the technology seems to dissipate and they feel very comfortable with it," she explained.

Take, for example, an older adult with low digital health literacy. A smart hospital room might, on the surface, sound daunting to them, and they might fear it could dampen the human connection that so often eases their hospital experience.

But, according to McKinnis, those patients soon learn that computer vision makes it easier to engage their daughter in their care from the opposite end of the country. Meanwhile, digital whiteboards let them know their care team and keep on top of their schedule for that day.

"That just changes the equation for our patients. It's pretty powerful," McKinnis said.

There's payoff for staff, too. The smart hospital rooms make it easier for staff to gather information about the patient, helping them to streamline their workflows and ideally helping AdventHealth boost staff retention.

Employee retention numbers, plus data about throughput metrics and process measures, will be key performance indicators as AdventHealth continues its rollout. McKinnis said it's too early to draw any conclusions, but the health system is hopeful about its initial data.

But, ultimately, the biggest prize is the way in which the health system has balanced a technology overhaul with human-centered care, she said.

"We've really been able to personalize care in a way that I've not seen in my career," she concluded. "People feel known and they also feel like they're in control of the right information, which really decreases the anxiety with being a patient in a hospital."

Sara Heath is an executive editor at Xtelligent Healthcare Media, where she covers patient engagement, healthcare policy and health IT.