The need for a new children’s hospital has been a pressing topic for years. The old HUS hospital buildings are in bad shape, and seriously ill children are treated in numerous different places.
The New Children’s Hospital will replace the obsolete facilities of the old Children’s Hospital and Children’s Castle. The hospital in Meilahti, Helsinki will be completed in stages by the end of this year (sections A and B, which are half of the building), and the rest (sections C and D) in spring 2018.
The design of the hospital has been influenced by HUS’s desire to change the whole operation of the hospital.
“We discussed how to get rid of time-consuming routine tasks, how to improve logistic efficiency, how to better avoid mistakes, and how to increase good service experiences,” says Pekka Lahdenne, Medical Specialist and the Project Design Manager of the Hospital Operations. He presented the project in the energy seminar hosted by Granlund in May.
Granlund is responsible for the design of the hospital’s electric, telecom, IT, security, fire extinguishing, AV, fixed hospital equipment installation, and lighting technologies.
“We ensure that the fixed and the wireless infrastructures of the children’s hospital are ready for new digital services. This requires, for example, accurate measurements of communications networks and accurate design of wireless network bandwidth,” says Aki Väänänen, Team Leader at Granlund.
New technologies have not been prepared for in this proportion in any previous Granlund project.
Technology for the Patient’s Benefit
The corner stone of the operation of the New Children’s Hospital is real-time resource planning, which utilises location technology. This means, for example, that the patients’ treatment process is followed digitally, and that stocks are filled automatically.
Upon arrival, the little patients are assigned an avatar and a badge from an automated machine to help locate and identify them. The ward patients have access to tablets for reading information about their treatment, playing games, and being in contact with nurses and people at home.
Children’s voices have been heard in the design: they have had a say in the tablet use policy and in the themes of hospital clothing.
“We have also made an effort to positively impact the patient experience, for example, by installing effect lighting and moving illusion lighting in the common areas of the hospital, and by installing colourful lighting that the patient can control with a tablet in the patient rooms,” says Ralf Lindström, Group Manager at Granlund.
Granlund has also designed the hospital’s special sound system, which is used to create soundscapes. New technologies increase comfort, improve the hospital’s efficiency, and give the personnel more time with the patients.
Towards Lean
The significance of information systems and technology in future hospitals has increased even more. Digital hospitals improve the efficiency of health care and help focusing on the patient.
