Technology Future-Ready: Ensuring Your Healthcare Facility Won't Be Obsolete Before It Opens
- EquinoxHIT News
- Jun 16
- 5 min read
Every healthcare construction project begins with an ambitious vision—to create the "hospital of the future". Yet when budget constraints and timelines clash with this vision, critical features that ensure long-term viability often end up on the cutting room floor. The result? A facility that may be outdated before it even opens its doors. In an era where technology evolves faster than ever, ensuring your healthcare facility is future-ready isn't just advisable—it's essential for long-term success.
The Challenge of Value Engineering
Value engineering is an inevitable part of every construction project. However, what saves dollars today can cost tens of thousands tomorrow, particularly when it comes to technology infrastructure. With healthcare technology advancing at breakneck speed, facilities must be designed to accommodate not just current needs but also emerging technologies that will become standard in the near future.
Consider technologies like ambient clinical intelligence that capture and document patient encounters automatically, or smart rooms that adapt to patient preferences and clinical needs. Five years ago, these might have seemed like distant possibilities; today, they're being implemented across forward-thinking healthcare systems.
Today's healthcare consumers expect unprecedented levels of transparency, availability, and convenience. They compare their healthcare experiences not just to other hospitals, but to their experiences with other industries like retail or banking. New construction presents the perfect opportunity to evaluate which technologies, systems, software, applications, and integrations should be carried forward, eliminated, or added to your new facility.
Creating an Innovation Roadmap
To build a truly future-ready facility, consider these strategic steps:
Form a Technology Review Committee: Led by a Healthcare Information Technology expert, that includes key stakeholders like clinicians, facilities management, technology teams, patient experience, and the community.
Review and Assess Existing Technology Standards: Assess your current technology ecosystem and what competitors are implementing.
Categorize Technologies: Sort technologies into must-haves, nice-to-haves, and dream-to-haves. Depending on your location and system size, these categories will look drastically different. Example:
Must-Haves:
Electronic health record and essential integrations
Communication systems
Patient engagement platforms
Enterprise imaging solutions
Network infrastructure with redundant capabilities
Cybersecurity systems
Wayfinding technology
Real-time location systems for staff, visitors, hand hygiene, and asset tracking
Automated medication dispensing systems
AI-powered predictive analytics
Nice-to-Haves:
Ambient patient room controls
Smart room technologies, with digital room signs, whiteboards, and infotainment systems
Advanced clinical decision support tools
Ambient clinical documentation and intelligence
Advanced robotics for supply delivery
Virtual nursing and specialty care capabilities
BYOD (bring your own device) support with Bluetooth cast to TV
Dream-to-Haves:
Smart parking
"Blue Dot" Technology for advanced RTLS with precise geospatial location, wayfinding, and directions integration
Self-checkout café
Prioritize Current and Future Needs: Align your budget and timeline with day one essentials and competitive advantages, incorporating input from vendor partners about their product roadmaps.
Plan Infrastructure That Supports Growth: Work with architects and engineers to design spaces with technology flexibility in mind.
Communicate Your Vision: Develop a communication strategy that builds excitement about your facility's technology future.
This approach helps construction teams develop accurate requirements, budgets, and timelines that meet both current demands and future needs.
The Virtual Build is as Important as the Physical
Today's healthcare workflows are increasingly virtual. Each new physical facility requires a corresponding virtual build—testing, deploying, and training for all systems and applications that will support operations.
Conducting an applications rationalization process is essential. Form a committee to:
Create a comprehensive inventory documenting all applications currently in use.
Evaluate each application against established criteria.
Identify organizational needs, redundancies, and gaps.
Review necessary integrations.
Find efficiency opportunities.
Eliminate duplicate applications.
Create application and integration roadmaps aligned with construction schedules.
This process provides a baseline for your technology department to manage applications and create integration roadmaps that ensure both physical and digital workflows meet the needs of staff and patients alike.
Don't Value Engineer Away Your Future
A common mistake in healthcare construction is value engineering out infrastructure that would support future technology needs. This short-sighted approach invariably costs more in the long run.
Consider both hard and soft costs when making these decisions:
Retrofitting rooms for additional electrical outlets or network drops is far more expensive than incorporating them from the start.
Shutting down patient rooms for upgrades disrupts care and creates operational strain.
Staff working around construction face additional burdens that could impact patient care.
With proper innovation and application roadmaps in place, you'll have the data needed to advocate for adequate infrastructure during value engineering discussions. This is not the place to cut corners. When defending technology infrastructure during value engineering, focus on return on investment:
Demonstrate how proper infrastructure supports revenue-generating services.
Calculate the cost of future retrofits versus upfront investment.
Highlight how technology supports patient satisfaction and staff retention.
Show competitive advantages gained through technology readiness.
Present case studies from other facilities that faced costly retrofits.
Aligning Technology Implementation with Construction Phases
The roadmaps you've developed should directly inform your coordination with the construction timeline and technology deployment strategy. Here's how to ensure they work in harmony:
Technology Construction Coordination Plan: Create a detailed plan that synchronizes technology infrastructure installation with building phases.
Technology Transition Planning: Develop a comprehensive plan for moving from existing facilities or systems.
Construction-Aware Testing Protocols: Adapt testing protocols to the realities of construction environments.
Success Metrics: Establish unified metrics that measure technology readiness in a construction environment.
In today's rapidly evolving healthcare landscape, some thought leaders have begun to challenge the very concept of "future-proofing," suggesting that we should instead think in terms of being "future forward." They argue that technology evolves too quickly to be truly "proofed" against. While this perspective offers a valuable nuance, the fundamental goal remains the same: designing healthcare facilities with the infrastructure, flexibility, and strategic foresight to embrace technological advancements rather than be disrupted by them. Whether we refer to it as "future-proofing", "future-ready," or "future forward", the essential work is creating spaces that can adapt to emerging technologies without costly retrofits or operational disruptions.
Properly planning for technology in healthcare construction isn't just about avoiding future costs—it's about creating immediate competitive advantages and better patient experiences. Forward-thinking organizations embrace robust technology planning during construction and build facilities that can evolve alongside healthcare delivery models, positioning them as leaders in their markets.
Expert Guidance for Future-Ready Technology on Your Healthcare Facility Construction Journey
Every healthcare construction project begins with a vision of exceptional patient care supported by modern facilities and innovative technology. Navigating the complex intersection of construction, technology, and clinical requirements demands specialized expertise.
Equinox HIT specializes in guiding healthcare organizations through the complex IT components of construction projects, combining healthcare technology expertise with construction experience to ensure your facility is strategically planned, properly budgeted, and future-ready. Our team has guided countless healthcare systems through this process, helping them avoid costly mistakes and ensure their facilities truly become the hospitals of the future they envisioned from the start.
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Contact us to schedule a consultation.
This article was written by the Equinox HIT team with editorial assistance from generative AI.
