What do you think hospitals will be like in the next decade? A group of 33 experts from around the world recently participated in a crowdsourcing simulation to imagine how rapidly-evolving technologies and demographic and economic changes might alter hospitals over the next 10 years.

The panel of experts involved in the exercise included healthcare chief experience officers, physician and nurse leaders, public policy leaders, technologists and futurists. The exercise was conducted by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions. The experts’ vision included:

• Redefined care delivery by methods such as:
  • Centralized command centers (a type of air traffic control for hospitals) to improve decision making
  • Continuous clinical monitoring
  • Targeted treatments
  • Smaller, more portable devices
• Patient experience improved by digital and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies which can facilitate on-demand interaction between patients and providers, along with seamless processes.
• Improved hands-on care by providers with robotic process automation and AI, which can allow for more time providing care and less time documenting it.
• Improved operational efficiency using technology.
• Hospital design that incorporates features to improve the well-being and health of both patients and staff members.

The report also called for a focus on interoperability by moving EHRs to the cloud and utilizing cognitive analytics to probe massive data sets.